Diary

Bam, it hit me, better than time travel in a DeLorean, a rainy day, a generation ago, teenage angst, David Gates, "Diary."

The song remembers when. That's no lie.

Sorry I didn't pull up a chair much last week. Deadlines and commitments. Migraines and Mondays. But enough about that.

This whole time travel thing started when Danica McKellar, forever known to those of a certain age as Winnie "The Wonder Years" Cooper, tweeted that the series aired its last episode 20 years ago. Twenty years?!

I remember it well. Kevin and Winnie, the ill-fated lovers, take a final dance to "If," the piece of poetry penned by Gates and performed by him and Bread.

"I never knew until that moment how bad it could hurt to lose something you never really had."

I once owned Bread's "Anthology" on cassette and a release whose title I can't remember on 8-track. I still have "Anthology" on vinyl, but was too lazy tonight to find it.

So I surfed to iTunes. Bought "The Best of Bread."

Up popped "Diary" and remembrance of things past. Poignant.

The soundtrack of my life, for the most part, belongs to previous generations. No, that's not quite right. It's still here, waiting for me and for others to find it. It's just that when memories from '93 make their way into my mind, "Whoomp! (There it Is)" doesn't trigger much but disgust.

For most of the '90s, I was adrift in the '70s, and still spend time there.

Anyway, "I found her diary beneath the tree," figuratively anyway, and I do wish for her, his wife, "all the sweet things she can find, all the sweet things they can find."

Wouldn't you know it? She wouldn't show it...