One of the things that sticks out from my childhood is the music.  My parents were really big into music and played it constantly.  To the point that by age five, I could sing along with songs like “Hotel California”, “American Pie” and “California Dreaming”.

But one of my favorites was a local hit that I was just certain everyone else in the world knew about – like Atomic Cakes.  It wasn’t until I left Chicago that I learned that most people don’t know the song…or sadly, the cake either.

While I’ve never forgotten the song, I sort of did.  It’s been years since I thought about it…but the other day, while chatting with friends, I recalled the song and went to see if I could find it.  Sure enough, I did.  And then I found it on iTunes.  Of course I bought it immediately.

There will always be a part of me that’s a South Side Irish, White Sox loving Chicago girl.  But I haven’t actually lived in Chicago since 1993.  We won’t discuss how long ago that was.  I have to admit, I don’t know Chicago like I used to.  I remember Soldier Field without the abomination of an addition  and Marshall Field’s as the place to go at Christmastime with their windows and Walnut room.  I remember when the McCormick place was a folly and when the Sears Tower was the world’s tallest building.

My Chicago is the Chicago of Just Yesterday – when Michael Jordan was king, Daley was Supreme Ruler, and Ditka was a god.  I grew up loving movies like “The Blues Brothers”, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “The Breakfast Club” partially because they were filmed in Chicago.

This song takes me back to those days.  When I was young, when Chicago was still a little gritty, and when Lake Shore Drive had an S curve.  Even without the emotional ties, I can still appreciate the music.  I’ve always loved the pianos, the harmony, and the violin right at the end.

And I have to laugh at the idea of five year old me singing “Snaking on by on LSD, Friday night trouble bound..”

Me - an awesome little '70's girl

Someone on Facebook started a “You know you went to X University if…” group.  This time though, that “X University” happened to be my very own alma mater.  FUS.  Or FU if you were feeling rebellious.

I went to the the Franciscan University of Steubenville, a small, very Catholic college in the Ohio Valley, located 42 miles west of Pittsburgh, home of Dean Martin.  It was across the river from Weirton, WV, which was just recently blown to bits in the new movie “Super 8″ (good flick, we highly enjoyed it.)

So all us little FUS’ers started chatting on FB – “Do you remember stealing trays from the caf to go sledding?”  ”Remember the smell from the steel mill?”  ”Remember this or that?”  All good times.  However, being the bunch that we are, debates started.  There were debates about whether we should be debating.  All I needed was a cheap bottle of wine and a haze of cigarette smoke and I could close my eyes and feel like I was back on campus, what with all the chatter going around me.

One of my claims to fame is my awesome powers of memory.  It’s like a party trick, how I can recall whole scenes of my life and replay them for friends who had forgotten them.  Amazingly, my awesome memory skills are only good for life scenes, not things like four years of French or that I was supposed to buy dishwashing liquid at the store while I was there yesterday.

Being the quirky girl that I am, I also associate music to memories.  A song can take me back to a day, time, room, group of people or incident.  There are songs that are painful to listen to because they remind me of a time that wasn’t so great.  Some make me cringe, remembering an embarrassment.  A couple will make me cry, but most make me smile.  Like “Come on Eileen” will always take me back to a friend’s wedding, when we were all there, stomping and jumping and loving life at that moment.

U2′s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” takes me back to the day we got cable tv.  I was 12 at the time, my life changing all around me.  Twelve years old wasn’t the best time in my life.  Actually, it was kind of a crappy year, as years went.  But I don’t remember that when I hear the song.  I remember the cable guy punching in the number 34 on our new cable box, which was Mtv, back when Mtv had VJ’s and played videos.  And there was U2, live at Red Rocks, playing this song that instantly stuck with me, 12 year old child that I was, jumping up and down on the couch to it.

Fast forward 8 years later, and I’m a college student at good old FUS, still a U2 fan.  Achtung Baby had come out and was the soundtrack to so much of my college life back then.  We road tripped to Pittsburgh with a big group of friends to see U2 live in concert one summer, yelling at each other in the Pittsburgh tunnel, teasing our one friend who cried when Bono sang “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, singing that song on the way out, stopping at the Dinor in Weirton to eat nasty fries and drink bad coffee and converse with two very friendly ladies who were probably prostitutes.  And then weeks later, staying after another concert to try to meet the band, and succeeding.

So when, on Facebook, one of my fellow FUS’ers asked “What song reminds you of college days?”, this is the song that came into my head.  U2′s “One”.  It was played at dances on campus, at the concerts we went to, in our cars on road trips, at the frat parties we danced the night away at.

Myself on the left, my friends Anne and Jen - college days 1993

In a way, it’s the perfect choice to sum up college days, especially having gone to a very Catholic college.  All those theological debates late at night, the arguments among friends, the unrequited college crushes, relationships that never were, and the ones that became so much more.  Most of all, the song reminds me of friends, those sisters and brothers forged in those years, who have been there to help carry someone through rough times and good times.  We sang this song at the concert, arms around each other, our voices hoarse from shouting all night.  We sang this in dorm rooms, angry at some boy who was being stupid.  We sang this at a dance, and laughed when some of the guys in our group picked up some of the girls in our group, acting out the lyrics, carrying us.

And now, all those years later, I still sing this song, with all the knowledge life has slammed into my brain.  If there was a soundtrack to my life, this song would be in a pivotal scene.

The hardest part to believe is that this song is twenty years old. I can’t comprehend it.  Instead, I shall play it and pretend I’m once again 20.

U2 – One

I’ve always wanted to sing with the band.  Instead, I sing in the car.  Well, I used to sing in the car.  It was one of my favorite parts of living in the country – all those long drives into town when I could kick back, put in my favorite song and play it loudly as I sang along.  In my car, I was a rock star.

It’s not that I suck outside of my car.  Or in it.  My kids (brutally honest little beings that they are) have told  me I sound good.  Josh (a more biased judge, but also brutally honest) thinks I have a great voice.  What I lack is self-confidence.  I’m sure years of speech therapy, being forced to listen to my lousy pronunciations of every other consonant in the alphabet didn’t help that.  I spent my childhood shying away from microphones and when finally getting in front of a few, choking magnificently in front of crowds of people who were probably thinking “See?  I knew she’d screw it up.”  Or so the voices in my head told me.

I’ve been getting better at telling those voices to shove it.  I haven’t had a speech problem since I was 12.  I just didn’t realize how much baggage I carried from that until recently, when it hit me as to why I was unable to get up and sing karaoke even though I wanted to.  I’d watch people go up and think “Man, even I know I’m better than that.”  But I’d stay locked in my chair.  One day it suddenly came to me, why I wouldn’t get in front of a microphone.  And it all seemed so silly, holding back because of what happened to me 20+ years ago.  Ah, childhood scars.  They do run deep, but you can tattoo over them and turn them into something pretty, right?

And so I did.  Instead of thinking “Man, I can’t do that” and let those voices remind me of how much people thought I sounded horrible at age 10, I mentally tattooed over them with “Hey!  You overcame SO much!  Your speech is amazing now, no one would ever guess you were completely unintelligible as a child.  Now get your ass up there and do what you want to do!”  And so I did. So far, the minor times I’ve gotten in front of a microphone recently, people haven’t rolled their eyes or left the room.  I guess I refuse to give up my dream of singing with a band.

Now, if I had the abilities, this is a song I’d belt out.  The tune is a unapologetic, in your face, but not “Please stop screaming at me” style.  It’s all over the place musically, and I like that.  And there’s harps in it.  What’s not to love about that?  And as I tell my kids, if you practice enough, who knows?  Maybe I could belt it out in public someday.

So let’s all sing along with Florence and the Machine – Dog Days Are Over -