Nothing Sounds as Good as, "I Remember That"

So the other day I was perusing one of the free dailies that is put out by one of the city's crap papers. I get it to complete the crossword during the fifteen to twenty minute streetcar ride to work and back. Unfortunately, it usually takes me less than forty minutes to complete it so there are times when it have to resort to actually reading it.

Anyway, on Friday I looked in the travel section and there was an advertorial for a cruise. But this ain't yo grand-daddy's cruise! No sirree, no shuffle board or any other old person boring stuff cruise. This is a cruise for the young! For the cool! In short, for people like me, who are ages 18-35. I read on, trying to see what else this "exciting" young person's cruise might have to offer me. After all, I might want to go on vacation soon...

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

At the end of March I will be 36 years old.

Which means that in two months' time...

I will no longer be allowed on the fun cruise.

Now, I've never been one of those people who worry about aging. I love my birthday, I love celebrating it. In fact, I love getting older. Every year I feel more and more at ease in my life and comfortable with who I am and my place in the world. Each year I get more and more comfortable with the fact that I won't amount to much.

But the realization that I am shortly going to be in a new, generally-considered un-fun demographic really made me think.

"Son of a bitch."

Hmph, well, all I can say is that it's their damn loss. I'm loads of fun. Plus, who wants to hang out with a bunch of damn 18 year olds? Yeesh. What with their piercings, and the pagers and the baggy clothes, aaaaagghhh! Those whipper-snappers don't know what fun is!

Well, after a blow like that I'm not ashamed to say that I had a couple of glasses of wine. And of course, with wine comes remembrance. So I spent the weekend listing old songs (like the one linked to in the title) that brought back good memories for me.

Because that's really all I have left now... *sigh* My memories... *gravelly coughing fit*

Ah, but I kid the old folks (i.e me). I got over it pretty quickly when I went and picked up my brand new 30 GB Video iPod. I spent all weekend downloading over 3,000 songs. I'm still not sure what these "video" things are, but apparently I can download some of those, too.

Anyway I have to say that I'm delighted with it. Today on the TTC I had a chance to listen to a shuffle of music that made me nearly giddy. The coolest thing about having all of your music in a device to shuffle it is that instead of only listening to the two or three songs on the CD that you normally might, you get to hear the other stuff, too and some of it is not bad.

Plus, I have a ton of old stuff that is mostly for kitch factor. For example, today I heard the theme song to Angie in between one of my favourite Smiths songs and Tina Turner. Hah! Remember "Angie"? Starring the dude from Airplane! and the short lady from Saturday Night Fever? Oh, and Ray Romano's mom. Man, I loved that show. And I loved the theme song. Which I why I downloaded it.

It makes me giggle to think how uncool my playlist is compared to the guy next to me blasting his eardrums with some dumb contemporary song. It's funny cuz he's going to want to listen to that song twenty years from now. He won't believe he remembers all the words. And he'll laugh.

Because remembering stuff is fun. But it's even more fun when someone else can corroborate it. Just like Prefab Sprout says, "Nothing sounds as good as 'I remember that'". That's why retro is so popular with every generation (only after they've all reached 30, though).

Do I really care that I'm turning 36? Course not. Besides, I'm not old.

I just have a few thousand songs under my belt, that's all.