There was alot going on that summer, not the least being the inner turmoil I was experiencing. I was eighteen, had a job, a car, now what? College? Which one? How was I going to pay for it? I just didn't see what all the fuss was about.
But for this one day in late July, everything was perfect.
The family units were gone and I had the house to myself and my best friend. The sun was so bright that every surface seamed to shimmer with pools of water and the heat caused rivulets of sweat to roll down between our toes. We had unfolded the lounge chairs in the back yard, turned on the sprinkler so that it would hit us just right, and slathered baby oil over every uncovered body part we could.
I brought out the boom box, stuck in the Guns N Roses, Appetite for Destruction tape and prepared to crack a few windows with the sound of slash's guitar.
The sun bore down, heat like a warm hot tongue licked up and down on our baking bodies, almost crackling with the youth of summer. Our eyes were decked in sunglasses, bikini's placed for optimal tan lines; we set out to get the tan that would stop the most determined cruiser on the local strip. Rock and Roll like you've never heard since poured out of the speakers and into our pores. The kind of music that convinces toes and fingers to move even before you feel the urge to dance.
For once that summer, I didn't have a care in the world.
"She's got eyes of the bluest skies, as if she'd thought of rain. I'd hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain."
It's the only song I've ever heard that made me wish from the marrow of my bones that I had blue eyes.
The music has aged and time has taken rockers down a path we've all had to follow sooner or later. But those words, They're forever a time machine that takes me back to the summer of 1991. I'll never be eighteen again and that tan has long since faded away with my fascination for fast cars and loud music but when that song plays, and the words wrap themselves around my heart, for just a minute, I'm 18 and the whole world is right there waiting for me.
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Sandy had this to say:
Your summer of 1991 sounds a lot like mine. I remember sitting on the beach late at night with boxes of donuts my friend had snuck out of her job at Donkin' Dounts and big thermos of milk. We'd huddle together and laugh as two of our friends would sneak up on unsuspecting necking couples. When they'd get near the two, who thought they were alone in the dark, my friends would belt out "You've lost that loving feeling."
Whenever I hear that song I think of those late nights on the beach and Tom Cruise before he went slightly batty.
Here from Michele's.- 12:42 PM, April 06, 2006
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had this to say:
How cool are YOU? LOL, man - you took me right back to 1991. I graduated from high school that same year.
It sounds so cliche, to want to just go back to some of those moments, really savor them and hope they never end...- 10:56 AM, April 11, 2006
