For as long as I can remember, I have loved music. I can remember getting ‘Elton John’s Greatest Hits’ and ‘Neil Diamond’s Greatest Hits’ when I was just a little guy. And I can remember constantly going to the record store to get new music. When I first started, it was all vinyl. Soon after that, there was a big change to cassette tapes. The record store looked a lot different than before. Tapes didn’t take up much room, so the layouts of our music shops changed. And then came CDs. I can remember the first CD sections were tiny, usually shoved in a corner. The first CD I ever bought was ‘Huey Lewis and the News: Sports,’ not because this was the CD I was looking for, but because there wasn’t much of a selection and that was all I could find. Kids today wouldn’t know what to do with a cassette tape. I’m sure they’d look at it like it was an alien relic. And when they discovered the tape itself could be pulled out, there’d be loose tape strewn about like toilet paper. They definitely we...
At some point recently, the kids and I were telling each other stories. I can ’ t remember who went first, but Wyatt and Pepper each told their stories amid interruptions and corrections and suggestions. Let’s say for the sake of argument that Briar wasn’t talking yet, so it became my turn. Rather than the usual stories of kingdoms and unicorns and the garden variety stuff I usually went for, I decided to pull from my memory of past events. The kids listened in amazement, not really understanding what I was talking about. The story was a hit. And I think I’ll share it with you now. It was the summer of 1993. I had finished my first year of college at The College of Charleston. At the end of summer, I would be transferring to NC State. I enjoyed College of Charleston very much. I loved the 9-to-1 girl-to-guy ratio. It had been a great year. But I had spent most weekends driving up and back from Raleigh to see my girlfriend Marcia. At some point during the year, I had decided...