It was good

 Sometimes you hear a song, or a piece of music, and your mind and soul are transported back to a time in your life where that music was, perhaps, ubiquitous. Or just the time you associate with that song. That unique, transportative quality of music is something that draws it to me and keeps it near my soul - I was listen to a random playlist recently, and I heard the tune "Good" by Better Than Ezra come on.  The song was a post-grunge one hit wonder, but I remember it being on the radio all the time the summer of 1996 - the year I was 18 years old.  I'd freshly graduated High School by the seat of my pants, and I was eager to start a new life, and becoming the "adult" I always wanted to be.  That kind of promise and hope really only comes with the inexperience of the age, but that summer I had a car, I had a part-time job working at a Roller Hockey Rink, and a pocket full of dreams.  The world was my oyster - and cruising around the little part of the world I lived in with my radio blasting really fueled that.  I still remember the warm breezes of that summer - I'd been accepted to and was going to college in the fall.  I had already made some new friends at college orientation (which took place the day after I graduated High School) and the future seemed so bright.  Some of those friends I made on that one overnight orientation are still some of my best friends today.  But that song... it was always on the radio, and in 1996 - radio was still king.  We still listened to radio, and our collection of CDs.  We even still listened to tapes -  I remember getting to college and meeting kids who had collections of taped Phish and Grateful Dead shows.

But every time I hear that song, I remember that carefree summer - I remember the roller hockey rink, I remember thinking that it was a new start for me.  I could leave the insecurities and weirdness of young High School Steve in the dust, and create a cool new guy for the world to like.  Of course, as time showed me, I was already all I ever needed to be for people to like me, I just had to learn to like myself.  You can lead a mule to water, but you can't make them drink.

But I hear that song - and old 18 year old Steve pops up inside me, and I wonder how so much time has passed.  I don't know how I could be creeping up on 30 years since that moment, and I think of everything I've experienced and endured since that time.  I'm just glad I remember what it was like to be young, dumb and hopeful.  My dreams have changed and shifted; some came true, others never manifested - but I think I've lived a life that I am proud of and thankful for.  I got a lot of things that I never knew I wanted, and I've experienced so much I never thought I would.  Here's to always hearing the music, and may it always remind me of the time in my life that it underscored.  I'd be lost without the musical highway in my wake, the music that has scored my unconventional life.