Time After Time

When I was a sophomore in high school, I remember hearing the last measure of a song on the radio. I quickly turned it up recognizing the tune. It was the kind of recognition that didn't occur a few months ahead of time, it was the kind of recognition that now happened because it sparked something in my brain...but happened maybe even 10 years prior to the remembrance. My mom was driving and I asked her who it was that was singing. She didn't hear the tune, so I was left with this incredibly faded memory or recognizing this music without knowing how or why.

Days went by and the thought didn't really ever return until another time I was in the car driving with my mom and the song came on again. I quickly turned it up almost screaming "Mom, who is this...I know this, but I don't know how." My mom listened trying to recall her memories. Alas, she didn't know. After what seemed months, my mom came to me and said, "I remember that song, but not who the artist is. I remember your babysitter we had in California (I was 4 at the time) would always blast this in our house for you kids." Ah hah!! It didn't come back to me, but it made me feel a lot better that I wasn't crazy. Mom continued by telling me that the lyrics said "Time After Time" and that is when I called my very in-tune musically adept friends to ask them if they knew who sang it.

Within the next week, I found Cindy Lauper: a lyricist of my own heart. Time After Time was the magnet to this beautiful relationship. Girls Just Want to Have Fun, another memory provoking song. Yesterday, I worked out to her She's So Unusual CD.

Don't you love it when you rediscover some part of your past that has been locked in your memory...but it is not very clear? I love it. I have since been trying to unlock bits and pieces of my childhood and have recently discovered movies from my past, including The Challengers, Teen Witch, On Our Own (all of which were watched when I was 5 or 6 at my friend Erin's house), George Michael's Careless Whisper (I don't know the memory associated with the song...just that it is ingrained in my memory), WHAM and Blackbeard's Ghost.

The point is that the memories may have faded, but the remembrance of these songs and movies stuck with me until I could create new memories.