One of the games that really brings me back is actually the arcade game Asteroids. (Shown here as a widget game on my Mac). The Asteroids of my youth was a game in the local 7-11, back when I lived in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Slurpees I wasn't allowed to drink. The song What I like About You was pretty big then, as far as I remember. I was about ten or eleven. But I think that I thought it was a Kinks song, having just come from Miami Beach, where I used to sing there's a red under my bed, and there's a li'tl yellow man in my head, don't know why I mixed them up. I also remember finding Aerosmith around then, and playing the 45 for "Sweet Emotion" on my boxy, denim-covered record player. I had a crush on a tomgirl with long braids, and they were teaching us BASIC computer language in my class. Weren't they? Or was that a few years earlier? It begins to blur together. I think when I was into Asteroids, that was the same year I got in a fistfight with my best friend in class, got smacked by a girl I grabbed in school, and got in trouble for drawing in class instead of listening to mister whatever with the permanently crooked finger. That was also the year I heard the word "Mundane" and found it interesting. I had asked the woman (my mother's friend) who had just slapped me in the face what "mundane" meant, but she said "I said 'Monday'." That's not why she slapped me. I don't really remember that part. Probably my "mouth." I was getting in trouble in school for quite a long time, if I recall correctly. We are Family was a hit that year, too, as was Hair of the Dog by Nazereth. If I'm not mistaken, there was something about the Iranian hostages floating through the news about then. And Michael Jackson sang tweedledeedledee like a bird. But weren't his socks glowing in Miami? Sometimes I think time is not linear at all except when a Present is imagined. I was playing trumpet. Or violin. I tried both for a while. The film Halloween was released. Oh, and had a thing for Jessica Malinowski. Fell in love with playing AD&D (for those who don't know, think Second Life but using your imagination). Or was it just plain ole D&D back then? Listened to my Devo tape Freedom of Choice over and over and over. Found Another One Bites the Dust by Queen and it threatened to change my entire worldview. Definitely changed my walk.

About sixteen years later or so (1996?) I was talking to a (video rental) storeowner's daughter—a 16 year old girl—and was telling her about that Aerosmith record I once had and she stopped me and asked "What's a '45'?"

Just keeps on turnin'.