Quick before you read any further! I want to know your first thought when you saw the title of this song. Got it? Great.
Last night, I was checking out after a quick trip to Trader Joe’s. A woman who I figured was close in proximity to me in age was running the register.
“Your total is 19.79.”
“Great song!”
She made a face and started humming to the music playing in the store.
“I can’t hear what it is.”
“1979? The Smashing Pumpkins?”
“What? Oh. Your total”
“Yep. Loved them.”
“Oh I don’t really know them much. I think anyone younger than me wouldn’t have known that at all.”
I bowed my head in sadness and dismay while facepalming.
“But I know Billy Cor…gan, right?”
“Yes. Billy Corgan.” Visions of magazine articles and album covers filled my head instead of photos on Facebook. Song lyrics on the inside of CD covers instead of lyrics.com. Surreal videos on MTV instead of YouTube. I picked up my bag and started to leave, my chin buried in my chest.
“I should get points for knowing that, right?”
“Have a good night, young lady!”
And I walked out of the store wondering where to get a walker and a bottle of prune juice.
I’m okay accepting my age, but MAN was I not ready to be worlds apart from someone no more than 5 years younger than me. I remember my friend Jane and I planning our escape to the MTV Beach House, where we hoped to stay in Room 1979. It was a thing. I swear.
And now I’m just melancholy. With infinite sadness.
You see what I did there? Fine. Go Google it.
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First, I’m about to flex my 90s Grunge Princess muscle and tell you that the album title was spelled Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Second, my older-than-dirt moment came last year when my massively pregnant self was on the hunt for a Caboodle to store my nail polish. I went to Target and did a waddling happy dance in the aisle when I discovered that THEY STILL EXIST. I told the cashier how excited I was, even humming the commercial jingle “you got it together, Caboodle!” and it was all blank stares. Then she informed me she was born in 2000. Get off my lawn, whippersnapper!
OK, My first thought on reading the title: 1979 – no particular song connection, but it was a heck of a year with divorce in the wind, a business going poorly – definite melancholy material, not nostalgia. Maybe I should have been listening to Smashing Pumpkins, but I was more of the Grateful Dead generation and didn’t know what to do but keep on truckin’.
Well I ain’t no new messiah but close enough for Rock and Roll and I’m older than you. Like a lot. 🙂 Its like how I still eat Peanut Butter Crunch cereal, it tastes great, it’s nostalgic but lets not pretend it’s a bigger deal than it is. I had a similar experience with a cashier not knowing who Barry Manilow was. I killed her. 😉
Be grateful that you’re still as young as you are as I don’t know who the Smashing Pumpkins were or the song. In 1979 I was already married 9 years and going through all kinds of crap – and yeah, Grateful Dead. Although I was a lot cooler way back then.