On balance I would say that these are the good old days. But there were others, and some are so special that revisiting them once in a while is also special.
Thursday night I finished reading “1968”, the story of OSU’s undefeated football season. I’d lived through it the first time as a sophomore and the undefeated season’s retelling, week-by-week, brought back a myriad of memories.
The last forty pages denoted where the players and coaches are now and narrated the last decade of Woody’s life and his death.
I cried. I lay on the couch and actually shed tears for the guy. Twenty some years after I pulled Michael out of second grade to go to the memorial service, I cried.
It wasn’t just my second year in college that I was recalling; it was my youth.
Fact is I had bad seats that year. Sat at the bottom of the closed end, (below Block O) for Purdue; was in the open-end South bleachers for the blowout of Michigan.
But I walked High Street with the guys after both home victories, shouting “We’re Number One.” And I watched the OJ Rose Bowl with Stuart at Henry Katz’s apartment.
Glory days.
Then last night my brother prompted my attendance at the Moondog Coronation Ball, a retro-rock extravaganza downtown. The class of the night was Peter Noon, (late of Herman’s Hermits). It was hard not to identify songs with events of my long ago high school or college days.
Three hours into the night, though, reality set in. Enough of the past!
I’m not a kid anymore. It’s ten o’clock. Seinfeld’s on in an hour.
We got back uptown at 12:30. I put on another repeat of “Law And Order.”
Most days I wouldn’t say this, but this morning when I awoke I really wanted to tap someone on the shoulder gently and ask “Remember when?”