My parents are moving from the Huntington Beach house this week. Heading to Texas after 35 years in that house. The house I grew up in. So I’ve been thinking and writing about it. A lot. Thanks for indulging me on this one.
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During my recent – and final – visit to the house last month, I went for an early and sentimental Sunday morning run to the beach. Trotting up Hamilton Boulevard next to my high school, I spotted an open gate to the campus. Enticed, I took a slight detour and serpentined my way through the aging, empty place. Memories from those four years of the 20th century came flooding back – in various shades of clarity.
None was more vivid than the one evoked when spotting the school cafeteria, a curious place I remember more for assemblies than for meals.
One of those gatherings was to hear a guest speaker: a DJ from one of the LA FM album rock stations. He wasn’t a celebrity, in the broad cultural sense. But as a naïve, rock-loving teen, my sense was neither broad nor cultural. In these simpler times, FM radio ruled. So for me and the other couple hundred high-schoolers crowded into this room our honorary guest was just this side of royalty.
I mean, this guy made a living spinning records, probably (in my mind, anyway) bringing home righteous bucks and Hollywood starlets. All for dropping a needle on some Zeppelin and Aerosmith while occasionally offering his somnolent observations and the hourly station ID. He had it made. And here he was, seated with a microphone at the lunch table of honor in the Edison High School cafeteria.
We offered our rapt attention to this special guest as he stumbled through his, shall we say, loosely prepared remarks. Then he took some hard-hitting questions from the fawning audience. “Who’s your favorite band?” “Have you ever met Van Halen?” “Do you get to wear headphones at work?”
Then someone asked about the challenges of the job. In between sips from white Styrofoam of what I assume was stale industrial coffee – surely a futile defense against the morning’s hangover and overly fluorescent cafeteria – he rambled a bit on how vital it is to select music appropriate for certain parts of the day.
He then leaned into the mic on the table and uttered the line that, for reasons unknown to me, is the one and only line I remember from four years of high school.
“I mean, you wouldn’t want to play ‘Iron Man’ at 7 in the morning, man.”
Decades later, huffing my way out the school gate and toward the beach and along the sand and back to my soon-to-be former home, I consider all the classes, lectures, practices, instruction . . . all the teachers, coaches, monitors, crosswalk guards and that one graduation speaker I encountered during my lackluster high school career.
Total recall: One sentence.
I’m left to wonder why I couldn’t have remembered something a bit more constructive. And whether or not I heard (and subsequently forgot) a sentence or two that could have paid rich dividends for me later in life, or at least helped to avoid some pain. “Buy coastal real estate now.” “Invest in Apple Computers.” “When you have kids, don’t take them to Six Flags on the final Sunday of Holiday in the Park. The lines are terrible.”
But the real revelation for me was this:
I think The Line had a significant impact on my life.
To wit: After high school, I elected to study Radio/TV in college and volunteered to be music director of the campus radio station so I could, among other things, select music appropriate for certain parts of the day (and play some Ramones).
Then, after rejecting my first (and only) post-college job offer as a DJ – a less-than-tempting four-figure salary to spin records during the weekend graveyard shift in the border town of Laredo – I still chose a career path I thought would impress high school kids if I ever came back to speak. It occurs to me the Edison career counselor might have told me this shouldn’t be a top factor in choosing a career path . . . (if only I’d remembered that counsel).
There might be lessons to be learned here.
Like to teach my kids to discern and listen for (and remember!) the important stuff.
Or to choose words carefully, because you never know who will remember what you say. I’m fairly certain the DJ didn’t intend for The Line to play a defining role in the life of at least one impressionable high school kid at the cafeteria.
Of course, the biggest lesson I take from this is, no matter the circumstances . . . never, never, ever play “Iron Man” before breakfast.
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