Late in the Evening

I love XM Radio.  We've had it in one of our cars for about 5 years now I think.  Well, technically it's J's car, but I tend to drive his more than mine these days because it's better for trips.  I digress.  We have a variety of stations programmed in, including the trifecta 90's, 80's, and 70's stations.  Tonight, I landed on the 70's station at the exact moment they were playing Gordon Lightfoot's "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

This song actually conjures up about three different memories for me.

The first time I heard that song, I was somewhere midway through college.  A guy friend of mine could play the guitar and kept one in his dorm room.  He and the guitar performed regularly at the tail end of those dark, smokey, hazy nights when we'd all finally meander our way back to campus.  I'm sure the first time I heard it was one of those late nights where we were all crashed around his room, draped over chairs, beds, people, whatever we could find to prop us up, and singing along with the songs we knew.  It became something of a signature song for my close group of girl friends (also known as The Girls), one of those songs where you can look at each one of them and know you are remembering just about the same memory, with similar emotions.  Well, maybe not exactly the same emotions - two of the four of us dated the guy, so I'm guessing there are slightly different memories for some of them.  But close enough. 

After graduation, all of us went different ways, and I forgot about the song for a while.  Sometime during law school, probably during some random study break, I stumbled across it again.  I downloaded it and put it in my studying playlist.  So the second memory that song recalls is of a desk and a room with blue walls where I spent many, many hours studying.  It was a stressful, but fairly uncomplicated time of life - sort of like college, I suppose.

The third memory I have is a bit random, but amusing as hell to me.  Several years ago, J and I took a trip to Vegas.  OK, there have been many trips to Vegas, but on this particular one, my friend Anne (one of The Girls) and her husband came along.  Anne and I ended up having to make a drive wayyy out to the outskirts of Vegas to pick someone up, and while we were en route, that song came on the radio.  Neither of us had heard it in several years at that point, but almost immediately we were taken back to that same dorm room, laughing at the capers and shenanigans that we had gotten into back then. 

This morning on the way to school, my kiddos heard Paul Simon's "Late in the Evening" for the first time, and they both loved the song.  Maybe if I'm lucky, a few of the songs I introduce them to will stick with them for a while.