As a new parent, I spend a lot of time looking at my son and thinking about the empty slate that his is right now and how that slate will fill and change over the years. This morning I took some time during the snow to think about my own slate.
Let me tell you a story.
It was 1991 and I was a wide-eyed high school freshman. I still recall walking into Ms. Bazcek's Algebra I class that first day in fear. See, Ms. Bazcek had practically failed me in Pre-Algebra just two years earlier and of course it was just my luck to get her again in high school. Ms. Bazcek had assigned us seats in alphabetical order so I'm not sure if it was fate or dumb luck that sat me, Erica Friedlander, right next to David Hughes.
David Hughes was a senior. I know what you're saying. A freshman and a senior in the same math class? Joel will tell you that I add on my fingers and he's pretty much telling the truth. David was no better and so to sit us next to one another was about the silliest thing Bazcek could have done.
For the first couple of weeks, I did what I could to not make eye contact with David. I went to a huge high school so it wasn't too common for a freshman and a senior to chat. I noticed him coming and going though. He had dark hair in a bowl cut, fair skin and freckles. He was tall and lanky and he was perpetually drumming pencils, pens, fingers, anything on his desk. He sometimes carried a trumpet around too.
Finally, one day he turned to me and asked, "So, did you hear the new Little Feat album?" At the time, my taste in music landed somewhere between New Kids on the Block and Naughty By Nature. I had no clue what he was talking about. I told him that I didn't know who Little Feat was and, as Joel says, he looked at me like I had a lobster coming out of my head. He pulled out his Sony walkman (yep, we still listened to tapes back then) and handed over the headphones. From that day forward, he would bring in mix tapes of his favorite tunes, The Eagles, Grateful Dead, Phish, Led Zeppelin, The Allman Brothers, Widespread Panic, and before class started, he'd give me a listen and a brief education on each band (Tidbit: The Phish "Picture of Nectar" album cover is an orange, but if you look closer, there's a picture of Saddam Hussein with a bullet hole in his forehead).
Before Thanksgiving break, David invited me to go see Phish in concert in Port Chester. My mom had taught David in her days as an elementary school teacher and she must have had fond memories of him because she agreed to let me go. He drove us there in his old beat up Volkswagon. I literally had to beat on the dashboard with my fist to get the heat to work. The tickets to the concert cost $12 and we could sit anywhere. Naturally, David wanted to be in the front row. The lights went down and the crowd began to cheer as a mismatched group of musicians, including one long-haired man in a dress, took the stage. From the first note I was hooked. I loved to dance and this was a whole new thing. Spinning, swaying, laughing... the audience seemed to move like an ocean to the beat.
I started buying my own tapes. Big Head Todd and The Monsters, The Samples, Bob Marley. I started going to concerts. Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead. I saw Phish 12 more times in concert after that first night.
David graduated that year and went on to the Citadel. I remember getting a letter with pictures of him in his uniform with hair cut military style. After that, we fell out of touch. My love for music lived on though and even today I still pride myself on deviating a bit from the radio to find tunes that match my taste.
So the other day, when Brice was having a fussy afternoon and nothing I did would settle him down, I grabbed the Mac and went to iTunes to create a special playlist. Somewhere between "Its Alright" by Big Head Todd and "Ripple" by Grateful Dead, Brice fell sleep with a smile on his face.
I wonder whatever became of David Hughes. Is he in Iraq? Afghanistan? I hope that instead, he's got his own family and is sitting on his couch, bouncing his child on his knee, teaching him the lyrics to "Fee". And so, in my state of groggy exhaustion, with a sleeping baby in my lap, I whisper, "Thank you David Hughes, wherever you are."
And, you're daily dose of Brice. You can see that I'm trying to breed him to be the next Michael Phelps:
In an outfit clearly designed by someone who does not have children. This thing has more buttons and snaps than I've ever seen. Needless to say, the outfit was short lived once we had a diaper change.
