The Spirit of Musical Monday

For many years in all the magnificent teenage narcissism I could muster, I convinced myself I was the only teenager in the history of the world who upon birth had been plopped into the wrong family.

On the outside I was petite, blonde and had a turned up nose that made people think I was stuck up. Like they all say, “I was just shy.” If I was stuck up, then it should be good news to one and all because this would mean that every stuck up person in the world must be really nice and have major self esteem issues. I went to a private school and my parents belonged to a country club. I found these life details to be totally embarrassing. They made it much more difficult to convince the world that I was seriously an original, baby – a hard rockin’ Lily Pulitzer wearing bad ass who preferred her musicians look like this:

My favorite band for a brief, sweaty summer in the late 70s was Spirit. My small posse of equally conflicted, Top Sider and turtleneck wearing girlfriends thought we were completely wild and radical because we would spend hours in my family room dancing to this in-your- frat- boy-face rock song, Mr.Skin. One of us even owned Frye boots:

Further sign that I was plopped in the wrong body came when I went to college. My new girlfriends still wore Top Siders and turtlenecks but to my complete devastation and horror only loved Beach Music.

When I first met my husband he told me he liked Spirit, “okay.” In that seasoned rock critic manner that only people several years older than you can, he told me he preferred Led Zeppelin. By then it was a plus that he didn’t admire Spirit that much. On our first date if he told me he used to dance with his buds in his family room to Mr. Skin that would have freaked me out. Like a stuck up person I would have never gone out with him again.