Under the Table and Dreaming (or navel-gazing on New Year's Eve 2008)

Should I or shouldn't I publish this post? That's something that I've been struggling with since I wrote it back on New Year's Eve. On the one hand, no one could possibly be interested in this type of navel-gazing (to cite the title of this post). On the other hand, my dedicated readers like full access to all of my ruminations. Nay, they demand access to those ruminations. And someday I'll look back on this post and think about how young I was at 36.

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I started feeling old around 1:00 yesterday afternoon. The Philly relatives are planning to come down to D.C. for the Georgetown-UConn basketball game, but because they want to attend the womens game, which led to some initial confusion on our end, we need to pick up the tickets at the box office on campus. While the Hoya men play at the Verizon Center with tickets sold online, the women continue to play at McDonough Arena on the campus with tickets only sold on site. Incidentally, it's going to be a slaughter - UConn playing G'town in womens basketball is like the best team in the country playing a high school team. Oh well, at least we spanked them this past week in mens b-ball.

In any case, Maddie and I headed over to buy tickets yesterday after lunch. It was a stunningly sunny day as we trudged down O Street towards campus. In general, we don't spend much time west of Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. For one thing, it's dirtier, more crowded, and louder over there than on our side of the neighborhood with lots of students and their messy trash cans crowding the sidewalks. More importantly, I tend to get a little weirded out when walking through my old college haunts, constantly seeing carbon copies of my twenty-year-old self. Luckily, the school is on break, so Maddie and I had a peaceful, student-free walk through the campus to the box office. On that walk, we passed through the main quad, by the library, and down the road past my old dorm where I looked up and unsuccessfully tried to figure out which window was my freshman room. After finding the box office closed, we wandered back through old paths that I took numerous times during my college years, marveling at the new construction. It was simultaneously striking how much things had changed, but how much was just as I remembered it from back in the day. Maddie and I walked back home, sans tickets, with thoughts of how, at the end of college, the world is spread out before you like a blank slate just waiting for you to make your mark. Not that one has regrets, but one naturally wonders what could have happened differently with different decisions. Hell, rather than working for the Board, I could've made a mint at Lehmans and helped bring down the world. That's probably not better, but it would've been different.

Last night, a colleague of mine from work posted a playlist on his Facebook page comprised of songs that his research assistants suggested. The list included a bunch of old bands, like the Clash, but what really caught my eye was the inclusion of Joy Division. They were a late '70s punk/new wave band whose career was cut short by the suicide of their lead singer back in 1980. "Geez," I posted on John's page, "Were any of your RA's even alive when Joy Division was?" "Nope," he replied, "But you have to admire their knowledge of and enthusiasm for that era." A historical study for them, but I remember listening to Joy Division and the Clash in middle school. And listening to the old, but cool, bands like the Doors. R.E.M. was an underground, college band, while U2 had just started to break through.

Today, Abby and I took the kids to daycare where we offered Margaret the opportunity to stay home with Papa, which she declined in favor of Power Tots (her toddler gymnastics class) and Show-and-Share (her show-and-tell event at school.) I dropped Abby at work and headed out shopping to see if the stories of outrageous sales in our recession-bound economy were true. While waiting to pick Abby up afterwards, I flipped between radio stations. Q101, the "alternative rock" station from my earlier years in D.C., and 107.3, a "mix" station that plays "hits from today and yesterday." In both cases, I was struck by how many songs they played from the early '90s. Q101, which ostensibly is still a "hip" radio station, was particularly dominated by grunge and descendants of grunge. I sat there and listened to Pearl Jam ("Betterman") and Blind Melon ("No Rain"). About halfway through the latter song, I started thinking about how old the songs really are. At least 15, and perhaps almost 20, years each. In some part of my mind, I still think of these as "new" songs, but they're really no newer than the Monkees song ("Pleasant Valley Sunday") that I heard on the official "classic rock" station.

Music is an interesting thing. In some ways, it can take you back to the time when you heard the songs. Makes you feel young again, as if things haven't really changed all that much. At the same time, however, it can make you realize how far back that time actually was. So, I sat there in the car, thinking about how the "Big Chill" and "thirtysomething" were attempts to tie the Baby Boomers back to their past through music, although the Boomers are now collecting social security, and wondering about what would be the equivalent retrospective for Generation X. Perhaps it's Q101.

To celebrate New Year's Eve, we headed to First Night in Alexandria with some friends and their daughter. Although there were tons of venues with all sorts of interesting acts, we were confined to the kid-friendly shows at the Jefferson-Houston School for Arts and Academics on Cameron Street. There, Margaret got an excellent balloon ladybug from a clown and danced to Mister Don, while Teddy lumbered all over the place. The kids had a great time while we had fun hanging out with our friends and marveling at the chaos associated with kids.

During an intermission in Mister Don's kids act, we headed next door to watch a young band in the school auditorium. They had a saxophone and a violin in addition to the standard bass, guitar and drums. My initial thought was, "These guys have some sort of Dave Matthews thing going on." In fact, the second song they played was "Dancing Nancies" from the Dave Matthews cd "Under the Table and Dreaming" (hence, the title of this post.) I sang along to show Abby that it was actually a song. Looking around, I saw a middle aged woman also singing while all the teenage kids stood with blank expressions. Later, they played "Runaround" by Blues Traveler, which Margaret and I again danced around to, along with the other older folks in the room.

Upon getting home, I busted out my old Dave Matthews cd's, having been put in the mood to listen to them by the band. I was struck by two things. First, in the cd cover, the Dave Matthews Band listed a P.O. Box to join their fan club. Think about that. Although the cd was put out in 1994, that was so long ago that the internet didn't exist enough for a band to have a website. They were still using P.O. Boxes. Second, as I told Abby, I was once able to play a bitchin' version of "Satellite" on the guitar. No more, however, as my guitar skills, bitchin' or otherwise, have long since departed.

As befits an exciting New Year's Eve with kids, the night culminated with me putting in a set of early '90s cds - Live, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and the Spin Doctors in addition to Blues Traveler and the Dave Matthews Band - to revel in that music while writing this post.

On the one hand, all of this makes me feel old. I'm convinced, based on listening to Q101, that music hasn't really progressed since the mid-90s, but I suspect that's because I'm just fundamentally out of touch. And a New Year's Eve at home eating a frozen pizza, as we ended up doing, just doesn't seem that fun. While at CVS, I spotted some couples dressed to the nines, obviously heading out for exciting times. In contrast, I was paying for our frozen pizza and trying to keep Margaret from disassembling the candy rack.

At the same time, Margaret had this enormous grin on her face while prancing around to Mister Don. Unlike the other kids who tend to walk around with blank expressions, Margaret has this big grin that she puts on during such events, like she did at her Xmas pageant at school. We see it and, despite our natural parental bias, I'm sure that everyone else picks up on it as well. She just looks like she's having a blast. And everyone smiled at Teddy as he cavorted around, shaking the various musical instruments that he managed to pick up or trying to grab (and likely pop) other kids' balloons. So what if we were listening to Mister Don sing a bad version of She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain? I sang a better version on the way home in the car, and I think that Margaret appreciates my singing much more than she does that of Mister Don or anyone like him. And Margaret loved the frozen pizza. Which really is all that's important.