Performer: Van Halen
Songwriters: Edward Van Halen, David Lee Roth
Original Release: 1984
Year: 1984
Definitive Version: None
I hated, h-a-t-e-d Van Halen
for a long time. I wasn’t a fan of their music and I couldn’t stand their
preening videos. Mostly I couldn’t stand David Lee Roth, which, back in the
Eighties, made me pretty much like everyone else in the band as it would turn
out.
This song, however, changed
that. I don’t know if it was the synth or Roth’s straightforward reading or
what, but I didn’t hate it. In fact, I kind of liked it when it was all over
the radio in the spring and early summer of 1984. Of course, what really
changed my opinion of Van Halen was when Diamond Dave split and they got with
Sammy Hagar. After that—for awhile—it became all about the music and less about
the look-at-me quality that the band formerly had. But I’m getting sidetracked
again.
The summer of 1984 was a fun
summer, aside from the obviousness of the Hawaii vacation, which I’ve started
to recount. It was the first summer after Beth and I had become intimate, so
that was great, of course. And it was the first time I’d been to Torch Lake for
any length of time without parental supervision—details of which are to come.
As per usual, I worked at
Food World that summer. I had a pretty good arrangement. Normally I’d just show
up after I finished at Wabash and said I was available to work if they had any
hours open. Within a week, I’d be on the schedule. After I had proven myself my
senior year of high school, it was that easy to be rehired as a
bagger/jack-of-all-trades.
But this time, unlike the
previous summer, almost the entire staff had turned over with the notable
exception of the head cashier, the produce clerk and the butcher. Todd, who had
been a stocker my previous two tenures, was now assistant manager. The good
news was that most of the staff were my peers in terms of age. Before, I’d
always been one of the youngest ones by several years.
Two of the new cashiers were
a pair of cute (read: attractive and petite) brunettes—Renee and Marci. Todd
called them the Bobbsey Twins. The funny thing is I knew Renee from when we
were little kids.
We had grown up two doors
from each other on Norway Drive, and Renee and Jin used to play all the time
with the girl who lived between us—Dominique. When we moved away in 1972, I
never saw Renee again … until 12 years later when we found ourselves at the
same store.
Renee was definitely all
grown up, which was a bit disconcerting, but I was with Beth, so I wasn’t
interested in pursuing anything beyond a work friendship. Beth knew both Renee
and Marci from school—they all went to Watterson—and Beth’s family were in the
same parish as Renee’s, so they saw each other at church all the time.
As a result, Beth learned
previously classified information about some of my shenanigans when I was a
little kid. Her favorite story was how I’d get up at the crack of dawn and go
out into my backyard to swing on my swingset in my Dr. Dentons (complete with
footies and buttflap) while singing some song they couldn’t quite make out
(probably the Banana Splits Theme Song, if I didn’t know any better).
Renee’s parents didn’t know
whether they should call my parents to warn them that I was out by myself. That they didn’t just call family services on them for leaving a young child
unattended is a sign of the times, of course; I was fine being out there by myself. They never did call my parents,
but it was nice to know years later that I had other people watching out for
me.
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