Songs of My Misspent Youth: Running In The Family

The 1987 trifecta of my radio-listening habits closes with Running In The Family by Level 42. A song I first heard on Rock Over London, but was thrilled to hear playing on New York radio when Scott Muni's Things From England debuted it...the day my aunt went into the hospital for a ruptured aneurysm. I was 14, I was self-absorbed, much better to focus on music that what may or may not be. A week later I very happily told my aunt I'd picked up the album in Crazy Eddie's on the way up to the hospital. At the time she was giving recitals of West Side Story to the nurses but later on in the year did we ever have fun listening to this album.

That's the good memory this song brings to mind.

The other ones, the confusing memories, those are just intertwined with the good ones until they become not quite so bad as I thought they were. I could have picked any song off this album and arrived at the same destination, I lived teen angst and runaway stories through music because I was too chicken to actually strike out my own path myself. So I'd listen to Level 42 while re-organizing my closet and thinking of all the things I'd love to do if only I didn't have that headache, or if only whatever was in my eyes wasn't annoying me, or if I was thinner, or if I had an entirely different genetic structure. But as it turns out, and that 14-year-old I was would not be able to cope with this, I am exactly what I was then. I haven't changed a single person's life for the better, my closet is disorganized, and by the self-imposed standards I drove myself insane with back then I'm a complete and utter failure, but I'm much happier now. It's so bizarre.

YouTube has embedding for this video disabled, and...some of you who made fun of my love for Level 42 back then are probably thrilled about that. :P

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Running In The Family