Memories Are Made of This

I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but I've been listening to a Canadian radio station this week. What's wrong with that, you may very well be asking yourself? Absolutely nothing....except its target listeners are the over fifty crowd. But what can I say? Oldies soothe my soul. I get to hear Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Elvis, The Beach Boys, The Four Seasons (just to name a few), and sometimes they even throw in a little Billy Joel. Plus, that station plays old-time radio shows! Why do I find so much pleasure in these things? Well, aside from the obvious answer, which is: "I'm a little weird", it reminds me of my childhood because we were raised on old music and classic movies.

In fact, growing up, my siblings and (dare I say it?) I were just about the coolest kids on the planet. No foolin'. We really were. Well, at least in my mind. Sure, we could be real pains-in-the-neck, but that comes with being a kid (unfortunately some people seem never to grow out of this). We used to build forts in the woods, make mud pies, have tea parties (with water, or if we were feeling spunky we'd use Kool-Aid), swing from vines like Tarzan, make icecream out of snow, play figure games, build blanket tents in the living room (much to Mom's dismay), play baseball, make movies, record radio shows, argue like crazy, and stick together like glue and paper.

Do you know what the best part of all of this is? We still do. Stick together, I mean. My brothers and sister are, quite literally, my best friends. Sometimes I sit and earnestly ponder what I could have done to warrant having so many wonderful people in my life, but it baffles me. I do know that each of them, in their own way, inspires me to want to be a better person.

So, yes, I do love old music. I like the sound. I like the beat. I like to sing along with it. But mostly, I like it because, in a very round-about way, it reminds me of the people that I love the most. And that can never be a bad thing, right?