Was just reading through the comments on Timmer’s latest “top 100” post, marveling at the musical knowledge of our readers, and it reminded me of a conversation I had yesterday with my 2 best friends from college. The memory of the conversation flowed into what followed the conversation, and since it’s making me smile while I sit at the airport for 2 more hours, I thought I’d share.

Barb, Rachel & I, all graduated from the same university back in the early 80s. This means our formative years for music were primarily the 70s. We seem to share the same tastes in music (not much like Timmer’s taste, as far as I can tell from his postings), and grew up listening to the great folk-music artists of our time. Barb & Rachel each have teen-agers, while I have remained footloose & fancy-free, other than my 3 dogs.

I was in town visiting them for a day, at the tag-end of a business trip, and after eating a thoroughly delicious home-cooked meal, Rachel’s son found Barb’s old guitar and started strumming while we talked. That led to us discussing songs we grew up with. I forget what song started the conversation, but before long someone mentioned “One Tin Soldier,” to a chorus of blank looks around the table (Barb’s kid knew it, but the other kids didn’t). Of course, once you mention one song from a particular era, the floodgates of memory open, and song titles start pouring out like water. Each song title was greeted by a totally blank look on the part of the teens, and one of them finally mentioned how impressed they were that we could remember this stuff from.. oh, I don’t know.. 30 years ago? We of course explained that it was becuase of the time-frame in our life, but the amazing thing to us was that while we knew the songs and still remembered most of the words, we couldn’t begin to tell you who the artists were. I guess we just weren’t that sophisticated back then. For that matter, I still can’t tell you who sang those songs I loved so much back then -who *did* sing One Tin Soldier?

Anyway, on to the torture part.

As I said, someone mentioned One Tin Solder, then someone else mentioned Billy Don’t be a Hero, and I popped up with “… oh, and that song about the crash on the date… was it called last kiss?” Rachel said “Teen Angel,” and Barb started singing “We were out on a date in my daddy’s car…” Of course, Rachel & I immediately joined in, and we all drummed on the table during the beats between the lines, singing out the first verse and chorus as though we were 13 again. Then I tried to get them to admit to remembering “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road,” but they swore they’d never heard of that one (it played regularly on our top-40 station when I was in 8th grade, but we grew up in different states).

Ya gotta feel sorry for the kids, trapped at the dinner table, listening to 3 “old ladies”* reliving their adolescence. Then Barb dug out her song-books, and we made Rachel’s son play One Tin Soldier so we could sing it together, and then dragged him through “If I had a Hammer.” I think he was spared “Fire and Rain,” only because we couldn’t find it in Barb’s book.

So after Rachel’s son finally escaped to the basement with the guitar, I dug out my IPOD and Barb found some speakers, and we listened to James Taylor for the rest of the night while we caught up on our lives. What a wonderful evening that was.

True, lifetime friends are so precious. I hope those of us who have them know how blessed we are.

*I categorically deny being an “old lady,” being nowhere near old enough for the red-hat society, but I’m sure to the teens we seem positively ancient