It’s camp week. And because the kids’ sports/gymnastics/neighborhood camps all fell on the same week, it means I spend a lot of time driving around, delivering my kids to and from someplace or another, getting stuck behind more than a few county work crews (is it road re-paving month here or what?) and being frustrated because I can never find ANYTHING good on the radio.

And to make matters worse, all of my CDs are still in the other car from our road trip to the beach two weeks ago and I’ve been too lazy to transfer them to my car (yes mom, two weeks ago…and my suitcase is still sitting on the floor of my bedroom, mouth wide open, spewing dirty underwear and crumpled t-shirts).

But today I found an old mix CD buried in the depths of my glove compartment and as I swerved to miss a mailbox that seemed way too close to road, I popped it into the player.

As soon as Paul Young started singing about the girl that got away, I was immediately transported back to a summer probably 20+ years ago (good God…twenty years??). I was working at Six Flags over Georgia during summer break, making those big, colorful tissue-paper flowers on sticks during the day and selling glow worms by night. Occasionally I’d fill in at a store in the park that sold Iron Maiden t-shirts and bumper stickers that said “Save Ferris” (remember, you’re in the 80’s now).

The store had a killer jukebox, but like the rest of the store employees, I never had enough money to keep it playing. One day, however, our supervisor (a Georgia State student whom I was secretly in love with) came into the store, stuck an official-looking key in the jukebox and queued up this song. And as it played, he stared wistfully out the window, mouthing the words, with screams from the nearby log ride in the distance. He even sort of looked like Paul Young…with that great 80’s hairdo and square jaw.

Oh, how I loved him.

And as I sauntered into the gym to fetch a sweaty 9-year-old who’d rather do pretty much anything than play basketball, I found myself wondering whatever became of my tormented supervisor. And I wonder if he ever thinks of me…just another one of his tragic high-school employees, wearing that terrible white skort and blue and red snap-up shirt, leaning on the glass counter that I was stationed behind and constantly Windexing out of pure boredom, longing after him as he daydreamed about someone else.

Probably not.

Enjoy the flashback!
~tcb

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