If there are two things in our society that are supposed to make us feel young, they’re music and sports.
Yet here, in 2010, few things make me feel older than music and sports.
As I write this, I am copying the entirety of Live’s Mental Jewelry onto my computer. It’s a fantastic disc; one that I’ve re-found thanks to my wife’s Great CD Purge. Yet while reading the back cover, I was heartbroken to discover the release date: 1991.
Nineteen-ninety-one!? As in, 19 years ago!? As in, when I was a college freshman; when Don Mattingly was still a great Yankee; when my dad’s hair wasn’t gray, my car told us “A door is ajar!” and ice cream scoop at Friendly’s cost 75 cents? How the hell did that happen? And how did Wyclef’s The Carinval come out 13 years ago? And how did Wrecxx-n-Effect’s Hard Or Smooth come out 18 years ago? And why in the world do I have Tiffany’s 2000 comeback CD?
The same exact words and feelings can be applied to sports. Let’s see, I covered my last World Series … hmmm … uh … EIGHT years ago!? And Mattingly has been retired for 1 1/2 decades!? And Karl Malone is already up for the Basketball Hall of Fame? And the Delaware-Cincinnati NCAA Basketball Tournament game I attended was … when the first George Bush was president!?
I am truly baffled by time, and how a 40-minute spin class at the gym can feel like 10 years, and how 10 years can feel like a half hour. I can deal with some gauges (the growth of my kids; the recession of my hair), because they somehow seem natural and progressive. Yet with music and sports, I only feel old and washed-up. I think back to my boyhood, when we’d drive somewhere and my parents would turn on WCBS—the local oldies station. Some tune by Smokey Robinson or Frankie Avalon would come on and I’d roll my eyes. Now, however, reality has mashed me across those face. What Smokey and Avalon were to me, Men at Work and Madness are to my kids.
I am old.
And so is my music.
