FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER!

I drove down the highway, Abandoned Luncheonette playing on the CD player (my car is 9 years old).  I was belting the words, watching out for weavers, the cars that go in and out of traffic, scaring the wits out of those of us going at a steady speed in a single lane.

It occurred to me that this album (CD) was the same one I used to exercise to, back in the 80s.  Each song had a specific exercise to it: When the Morning Comes was sit-ups, Had I Known You Better was side leg raises, She’s Gone was front leg and back raises, Laughing Boy was waist twists and touch your toes, and Las Vegas Turnaround was jumping jacks.

In that apartment in Omaha I had two roommates . . . one a female teacher, the other a male medical student. They spent a lot of time hanging out. I spent a lot of time running from teaching all day to being a student in the evenings. I was in my mid-twenties, trying to raise my teacher income by raising my credits at the local university.

I see my two daughters following in my footsteps, always working toward something more, one a PhD interviewing for professorships, the other one earning her Masters’ degree, writing paper after paper.

I wrote papers back in the day, but without computers; it was tough. I wasn’t a great ypise (typist). Okay, I was a horrible typist, and the professors would only allow three corrections per page.  Remember White Out?

I had to start over many times. It was frustrating, time-consuming, and my shoulders and neck hurt just thinking about it. There was no spell check, no cut and paste, just a lot of white paper endangered by my clumsy typing skills.

It’s funny how a song or group of songs can bring back that apartment and those days.  My brain has compartmentalized those years of my life with Hall and Oates. I might have only owned that one album by them (gave away my albums like a doofus). I bought the CD a decade ago, wanting to have their harmonies back in my life. I bought it yet again when the first one fell out of my Suburban truck door and became scratched beyond recognition.  Who knew CDs wouldn’t last forever?

How many people these days play CDs?  I am a dinosaur.

In the 80s I had the fit body of a single woman in her twenties. I exercised in my bedroom, much to the chagrin of my downstairs neighbor. Did she spend her day in bed? Why did it bother her so?

Another neighbor had a gas grill on the back wooden deck, which was also the fire escape. How was that ever a good idea?  Why didn’t he invite us to join him for dinner?

I went on many dates from that apartment, like the night I got locked out and ruined my date with a new guy by worrying about how I was going to get back inside (no cell phones to call roommates). I was totally distracted. He never called again.

All this from one little album I owned forty years ago.

She sat in an abandoned luncheonette, sipping imaginary cola and drawing faces in the tabletop dust . . .