Soundtrack of Your Life...

I read an article years ago about music and how the music you listened to during your high school years is basically the soundtrack of your life. That there is no other point in time that music is as important to you.

Now I'm not sure if that's true but as someone who owns a LARGE amount of 80s music I would say it's probably not that far off either.

Though I might expand it and go middle school through college age. At least for those of us who grew up before the age of TikTok trends. I'm not sure a 30 second sound bite that stops being relevant after two weeks is going to be nostalgic for these kids today in 20 or 30 years. But maybe...

Anyway this morning I was listening to a literal soundtrack and, not for the first time, thought that it was the soundtrack for the most teenage moment of my teenage years.

I think I might have told this story before, I'm at the age where I repeat my stories a lot, but if not here it is...

When I was a teenager a friend of mine worked as the head cook at our camp. She was up there all summer and I would join her and help out in the kitchen as often as I could. A few weeks here and there, basically as often as I could work it in my schedule. So anyway, one of the stretches that I was up there with her an on again off again boyfriend of mine came up to see me.

We were off again at the time. I'm sure he thought it was a grand romantic gesture. You all know how I feel about grand romantic gestures.

Quick aside, this is what we talk about when we talk about being feral as GenX teens. Amy was between junior and senior years of high school. And this was her second summer as HEAD cook. I was between sophomore and junior year and would just head to the mountains for weeks at a time. Charlie had just graduated and he drove a couple hundred miles on his own for the weekend.

Okay, anyway...

Charlie is there and he has his car. Amy had been at camp for over a month by that point and I had been there for a couple of weeks. We decided to take advantage of the transportation and head to Las Vegas. Don't get too excited, Las Vegas, NM. Camp was in the mountains above Vegas. And by mountains I mean mountains. Very steep, very high.

So Amy, her boyfriend, one of the girls who was working the kitchen that week, and me all pack into Charlie's car and head down the mountain. After dinner and closing up the kitchen so it's late and getting dark. Amy, her boyfriend and I are in the back seat, the other girl (who was really sweet and lovely and from Valley Christian Church and had the most gorgeous strawberry blonde hair, and yes, I remember all of that but not her name) up front with Charlie because I would not sit up front with him.

We are all in the car and Charlie has a tape of a soundtrack that he insists we all have to hear. It's the soundtrack to the movie Streets of Fire. Now, when you are up at camp you miss everything that is happening everywhere else. No news, no movies, no TV. The summers up at camp were cultural islands. I can remember one kid coming through the line every day singing "I wear my sunglasses at night so I can so I can...." and never finishing the line. Amy and I made up all of the reasons one would wear their sunglasses at night and didn't hear the real lyrics until August when we were back in Albuquerque for school.

So at one point there is the pause between songs and we hear the tires squealing as we take one of the switchback corners on the mountain. The song that had just been playing? Nowhere Fast. We thought that was HYSTERICAL.

So we end up in town and nothing is open. The movie theater doesn't have a late show. No restaurants are open. Nothing. We went to the grocery store to buy snacks. There was shenanigans with racing the carts. We drove through the parking lot of the mental institution in town while Amy's boyfriend called out for his mother (looking back it was so stupid, at the time it was hilarious). Basically we fucked around for a couple of hours then went back to camp.

After we went back to our cabin and got ready for bed Amy said that was the most like a normal teenager she had ever felt. No jobs, no responsibilities, just goofing off with friends. And I had to agree. It was our John Hughes movie moment. Complete with soundtrack.

So now when I hear that soundtrack and especially that song I think of that moment. Careening down a mountain in the dark scream laughing with friends and going nowhere fast.

And it really is a good soundtrack. Of all the things Charlie got wrong over the years, he nailed that, we all really did need to hear it.