That song hits the mp3 player on shuffle. A guilty pleasure. You're driving along in your car down the dark expressway home after a hard day's work. The chorus kicks in. You forget where you are for a moment. You remember her. The tail lights ahead blur into a sea of tail lights years ago - it's you and your friends - in high school - leaning against the trunks of cars. You were actually happy. And she's there. Her face, so vibrant in the night at your favorite spot, drinking beers while the music blared out of car windows. You wanted those lips. You wanted to taste. You still do. You come to - your hand is in your pants - your face is strewn with tears. And your car is slowly wrapping, warping, screeching with piercing intensity, around a streetlight. We all get nostalgic about our school days. It is human nature to view the past through rose-tinted glasses or, more often, through mp3 compilations and beer goggles. Stop living in the past. Live in the present past now. Everybody likes to find out how their old classmates are doing. We wonder whether the fat kid is now a record producer, whether the school freak has found religion or whether the class clown is a manic depressive. But most of all, we want to finally sleep with the chicks we lusted after, especially after you finally know what to do in bed. There is no better feeling than discovering that somebody has failed miserably in life. And there is no better feeling than sending hot passionate emails to fellow classmates in a mid-life crisis. Secretly we all long to hear that the homecoming queen is turning tricks for dollar-bags of crystal. And we long even more to email her and make her miss what she turned down all those years ago. |