Confessions of a Fanboy

I guess I hinted around at this in the previous two columns about Bruce and “Across The Border,” but I had a retarded night last night. What ha-happened was this: Monday night, I worked a long day and was here until late. I came home last night and took a nap because I was tired and because I was expecting a phone call from 11. Teenage girls have nothing on the two of us when we get on the phone. Nothing. I finally hung up the phone with him around 5 a.m. God bless free nights and weekends, eh?

The nap had given me enough energy to power through the occasional sleepies and I realized going to bed at 5 wasn’t going to do shit for me, so I hit the shower and came in to work. I’ll be bleary-eyed by 10 and will be cursing my existence by 11.

There are a couple schools of thought when you have a night like that: you could start your morning off with big guitars and loud, hard, fast rock ‘n’ roll to try and wake yourself up. That might give you a heart attack or cause you to beat the shit out of someone because sleep deprivation has killed your inhibitions. You could start with something soothing, but that might put you to sleep behind the wheel. I chose something on the mellower end of the spectrum, but something with enough energy and life to be interesting. I hadn’t listened to Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris’ All The Roadrunning in awhile, and it just seemed right.

What the hell were we on about until 5 a.m.? The usual. The New Hampshire primary. The NFL. Our wives. We actually didn’t talk about music or sports nearly as much as we usually do, because we got into one of those “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” moments. For those of you who haven’t heard that song, go buy Bruce Springsteen’s Magic. Spectacular song, that. It’s a great slice of nostalgia pop and it would have been a fine theme for the conversation we had. Come to think of it, Knopfler and Harris’ “This is Us” would work, too.

Anyway, we went on a stroll down memory lane from our college days. We wondered aloud where people we once knew wound up, thought about the ones who got away, and counted ourselves very lucky that when it was all said and done we’ve wound up exactly where we are. It was fun to romanticize the different roads we might have taken. Despite more than a few off-color remarks and great stories about some of our former co-conspirators, the reminiscences made us thankful for today more than desperate for then. I just cannot believe the names we kicked around during that conversation; names I hadn’t thought of in — can it really be? — 10 years. Shocking. Neither of us would change a thing if it meant we couldn’t be where we are now, but a wayback machine and a cosmic pause button… never mind. It’s a lot like the day you wake up and realize you really won’t be playing CF for the Red Sox, or that you’ve waited too long and you won’t be putting together a chart-topping band. It’s the minds way of sweeping the impossible, far-fetched dreams for the future and could’ve, would’ve, should’ves of the past into your mental wastebasket. If you’re lucky, there’s a lot less bitter and a lot more sweet when the housekeeping is done. We’re both very, very lucky.

I guess I’ve lost the plot a bit now but if you’re old enough to have life behind you and life in front of you, you know what I mean.

Filed under: Tags: Bruce Springsteen