Wait, Enya? How could time listening to Enya be misspent? It's not, that's not the point of this series. It's all music that made this mortal existence bearable. Yes, that's what this has been every week.
There have been a lot of low points in my life, as you've been subjected to every week, but the one I don't mention much at all is the Thanksgiving weekend I wore my pajamas. They were nice pajamas, and maybe you see no problem in wearing pajamas for three days straight while in the company of other people who are not wearing pajamas but are in fact wearing proper clothing.
My skin hurt, you see. It was the '90s, and where the '80s were all unfortunate accidents and hormonal imbalances, the '90s were the resulting mutation. I'm not going to get into why my skin hurt, because at the time I didn't know why and I want to keep it real. All I knew was my skin hurt and everyone thought I was being ridiculous when I wouldn't give them hugs because my skin hurt. They were all fine with the the pajamas, though, because the pajamas were nice and soft and long-sleeved and this was before the pajamas developed great wear spots that made me resemble a zombie and it's not like I didn't put my bra on or anything, I just sort of turned into a crabby Hugh Hefner.
Around this time 92.7 WDRE was doing a retrospective of their Shreeeks of the Week. I was going out to the basement every 45 minutes to flip or put in a fresh cassette and yes I taped the whole thing, Caldor had a great deal on TDK D90s and 92.7 was sold to Univision for millions but I still have the Shreeek-end on tape for $10.
The second morning, before the Shreeek-end picked up again, the Enya song Caribbean Blue debuted. I loved it. I stood there in the basement with the nice painted floor in my pajamas with my cousin-dog Zorro listening to Enya, and it was the high point of an otherwise difficult time for me. Did I mention I also had some sort of runny nose?
The story picks up two years later, when WDRE was playing a former Shreeek called Caribbean Blue by Enya. I knew the song was good, obviously all the other listeners did too one Thursday in December, 1991, because here it was December of 1993, and the Shreeek from two years back was playing. I was outside, in the below-freezing backyard, getting snowed on, enjoying the hell out of the song. Didn't really think about my skin hurting anymore because I just got used to it. Mainly by standing outside in below-freezing temperatures until my nerve endings figured out what pain really was, but also by going up in my head and going "La la la, everything is lovely and I'm dancing a frikkin' waltz with myself which is good because no one else can touch me."
Not in so many words, though.
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