When you’re a kid, ten years is an eternity. When you’re 10 years old, 20 feels like it’s two lifetimes away. When you’re an adult, ten years is like snapping your fingers a couple of times. Bang. Gone. Just like that. Ten years ago I was working for Rounder Records, making something like $7.50 an hour and just getting Tar Hut Records off the ground. I lived with three other dudes at 107 Summer Street, just outside of Davis Square in Somerville, MA. I occasionally used to see the wonderful person who is now my wife walking near the square and I would think “I wonder what she’s doing these days.” Now we live and share everything together and have twins on the way – on a different Summer St. A different life.
Funny thing is, I have these pictures in my mind from those years like it was yesterday. One day I was standing at the ATM at Central Bank in Davis Square, undoubtedly hoping I even had $20 in my account to take out. And in walks Shannon Farrell, a girl I knew in high school who I probably hadn’t seen since high school. We struck up a conversation and a week later she told me she was having a party at her house nearby and that I should come. I thought “why not” and I went. There were many old high school classmates there who must have looked at me and been like “what woodwork did this dude come from?” My wife was probably one of them (she was there)! None of them had really seen me since the spring of 1989 and I, um, looked a little different than they probably remembered. I will never forgot walking out of the party with Mary Lee York, another person I hadn’t seen in forever. We both just happened to be leaving at the same time and after some quick small talk, she complimented me on my sideburns and went our seperate ways. That still makes me laugh today – the high school prom queen walking out of a party with a shaggy, boozed up, slightly shy, awkward kid in a flannel shirt.
I remember being thoroughly wierded out about the whole thing, suddenly being thrown into this different world. I attended a couple more of those parties and that feeling never waned. Fast forward ten years later – I still see Mary Lee and Shannon occasionally because Stephanie is friends with them. There are guys on our hockey team now who were also at these parties – I didn’t even know them at the time. Just odd how ten years later it’s all there. I would have never predicted it.
What were you doing 10 years ago?
IPodding:
Belle & Sebastian – You Don’t Send Me
Chris Cornell – Seasons
Josh Ritter – In The Dark
Bread – Make It With You
Bob Dylan – To Be Alone With You
Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash – Good Old Mountain Dew
The Kinks – Hot Potatoes
Hem – The Cuckoo
The Byrds – Eight Miles High
Varnaline – Blackbird Fields