Have you every done something stupid like make a mixed tape of songs that remind you of someone? I have… more than once. I’m so old that I made mixed tapes on cassettes of songs that reminded me of former boyfriends. Of course, I made those mixed tapes when I was still DATING said guys. Years later, it’s very difficult to listen to those cassettes (for one, it’s hard to find a cassette player in modern times!). After 20 or 30 years, you think those songs can’t touch you, but you’re wrong. As soon as you hear the first strains of any of “those” songs, it takes you right back to 1979 or 1985 or whenever it was, and cuts like a knife. Who would have thunk that I’d shed a tear, several actually, over songs like “Just Like Heaven,” “Reunited” or even “Flashlight?!”
Those songs/cassettes remind me of all of the times that I thought I was in love; a few of those times, I actually was. You know, when you’re with someone, especially if you’ve been with them for awhile, you think you’ll never forget their kiss or their touch or what it’s like to make love with them. As time passes, you eventually DO forget. You wonder if it wasn’t as serious as you made it out to be or if you’re just senile. Yet when you play one of those songs, you feel all of those emotions as if it was yesterday. And if you DO suddenly remember the tenderness of their kiss, their gentle touch or what it was like to lay in bed and make love all afternoon with them while Teddy Pendergrass played in the background, that makes you all emotional. What makes it worse is realizing that Teddy Pendergrass has long since passed away, but you’re still aging and filing through your dim memories.
I console myself by telling myself that I’m making memories every moment of my life and that some of them are bound to be better and more romantic and more memorable and more what-have-you than those from the distant past. But I’m feeling mortal, and it’s scaring me, ever so slightly.