Something about songs, again

So, yesterday I'm driving around town shopping for my Uncle's birthday present which is today (Happy Birthday Uncle Al!) and I'm doing my normal change the radio station when the commercial comes on thing. Top 40 station? Nope. Other top 40 station? Hate that fucking banana song. Jazz station? Ugh, not Kenny G again. Alternative station? Not interested in thrash metal, pass. Country station? Commercial, next. R&B station? Caught the last few moans from Barry White. Classic rock station? Surprise! My first "our song", ah, the memories... taking me back in time.

It's my senior year in high school and I've a new boyfriend, Mike. Mike, with the grey/blue eyes and the perfectly chiseled face. Mike, who wrestled and played third base. Mike, who lived 27 miles away from me and called every single week night to talk to me for hours on end about who the hell knows what. Mike, who I had sex with in his bed when his parents (what the HELL were they thinking?) left us alone in the house while they went out to dinner. Mike, the guy who taught me how to bowl (I still can't bowl... I think it was because I really WASN'T concentrating on the "finer" points of anything but Mike when he wrapped himself around me to show me how to throw the ball). Mike, who's battery died while we were making out in the empty field up the road from my house and had to spend the night on the couch under penalty of death if he so much as stuck a toe in the direction of my bedroom. Mike, who confessed that he'd been walking a girl to her classes (she went to his school, I did not) and whom he thought he might want to go out instead of me... the first person (sadly not the last) who cheated on me. Mike, who would become a Marine, and the last guy I ever slept with.

Wonder what ever happen to old Mike?

And, really, what is it about songs? They seem to crystalize and encapsulate a part of our lives, freezing them in time, preserving not only our memory of that time but somehow getting us in touch with exactly how we felt. Even if those feelings have faded with the slow erosion of time. Would that I could write something, anything, that has that much power and resonance. Songs are so powerful for me that I can not listen to songs that remind me of my ex. Perhaps, one day, I'll be able to listen to those songs with the idle nostaglia that I experienced when thinking about Mike. One can only hope...

Today, out of nowhere, 2 songs on two different stations... both of them, "our songs". Yeah, well, honey, it no longer looks like "You're still the One" and I've run totally out of "Patience". Sigh. Stupid songs.