Spearfish, SD

20 GB's worth is a whole lot of tuneage, especially for someone who's not really into music that much. So I'll admit there's a lot of random crap on my iPod, some of which I don't even think I've heard yet, and some of which I'm not entirely sure how I acquired. I also generally just let my iTunes play songs at random while sitting at my desk at work, which can be equal parts surprising and embarrassing, if, for example, my boss is standing there talking shop and suddenly Donna Summer starts belting out from behind me.

But just now, the strains of Europe's "Carrie" (remember "Final Countdown," eh??) emerged from my computer speakers and, while fighting back the involuntary urge to gag a little, I was simultaneously transported back to the summer of 1987, I think, and a nerd camp I attended in South Dakota with my sister. She was, at the time, rather into the Big Hair Bands, and I was just entering the height of my self-loathing awful awkward want-to-crawl-out-of-my-skin-to-be-anyone-but-me traumatic adolescent geek spurt. Consequently, I remember very little about that experience (though it is where I learned my main stupid human trick, aptly named the "William Tell, You Knock Me Out") except for a girl named Carrie who may or may not have had a camp crush on me while I obviously did not have a crush on her but tried to act like I thought one would if he did. Which seems to have involved playing that ballad at every opportunity. Little did I know then all the repeat bumbling jittery hand-holding nose-bumping evasive-maneuvers horrors that lay ahead.

Anyway, that aural link to the deepest recesses of memory is pretty remarkable. And sitting here shuddering, I think maybe it's no wonder that I never was a fan of glam rock despite my sister's best conversion effort.