Van Halen 5150

That's the soundtrack to my best summer ever. I was young. Too young to know that life would take me places I didn't want to go; too young to know that those detours would often be the best things that ever happened to me. Too young to feel tired. Too young to worry. Too young to think about anything but hanging out with my friends, getting swoony over boys, talking endlessly on the phone to my BFF Kelley, with whom I was going to move in and totally have the Kate and Allie experience during and after college. Too young to imagine that life would take us in wildly different directions to the extent that I don't even know where she lives these days. Too young to know Van Halen with David Lee Roth before the 1984 album, and too young to imagine that Sammy Hagar would be long gone by the time I was 20. And certainly too young to imagine that the son of President Reagan's seemingly-boring VP would in my lifetime become President himself. Wow.

But I go off on an anti-GWB tangent...

Refocusing: I was in the park with The Bambina yesterday, and something about the blue sky, the smell in the air, the heat of the sun and the glimmer of its shafts of light across my face instantly started the 5150 album playing in my head. It was green lights, open roads, the world at my feet, in love with five different boys, totally rocking my long permed hair, modeling myself on Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles (although perhaps achieving more of the Slightly-Weird-Guitarist-From-The-GoGos look), and just thinking about how much fun it was to hang out at the beach, talk nonsense, gripe about your clueless and totalitarian parents, and think you had life by the tail because you were, like, a totally mature 16 years old.

I smiled at my youthful naivete, and asked my Mom what her "summer album." As you can imagine from a Scottish woman of a certain age, she looked at me like I'd sprouted three heads, one of which looked like David Lee Roth. I realized this was not a topic in which she and I could share.

So--am I alone out here? Is the notion of a "summer album" a product of my sad and diseased little mind? Or do other people have one too? If so, what is yours? Go ahead and share, even if it's "Blister in the Sun" by the Violent Femmes. ;)