I try not to get nostalgic as a rule, but an old song I listened to in high school snuck up in a playlist and got me yesterday. It made me think of driving my old TR6 with the top down in spring, taking my girlfriend to feed her lambs…we’d be there during the golden hour. We’d try to figure out how to make out in the car and fumble around with that for a while.

On weekends we’d go meet up on the main drag with friends. Bounce around, in and out of other peoples cars, listening to music, goofing off, cokes at the Dairy Queen, or maybe we’d have movie tickets and drive a couple of towns over to see Bill & Ted’s excellent adventure, young guns, that Indian Jones movie with Sean Connery as his dad…

Cassette tapes playing loudly through pioneer speakers, sitting on the hood of the car. Graduation was just a few weeks away - and everything would change for me the day after.

All of that seemed okay at the time, but now it just seems to beautiful and impossible now. I graduated with 82 other people, and now I live in a metro area of 7 or 8 million and growing fast. I can’t imagine how far I’d have to drive to even find a dirt road, and I certainly don’t expect Bob Seger, Pink Floyd, Great White or Gun N Roses to put out a new album…I do kind of miss it.

Well, now that I’m going full nostalgia…

Beach vacations @ Myrtle Beach. I’d sleep in the living room of the condo and open up the sliding glass door to listen to the waves all night. My dad and I would wake up before anyone else and go have breakfast together. I’d walk up to the pier and get a coconut popsicle, and in the evening we’d wait in line for an hour to get a table at Damon’s Ribs. When it was dark I’d walk the beach and pick up the bioluminescent sticks from the water and try to flirt with the girls at the pier (with little to no luck).