Memories Museum (1)

I am the child of memory. Those things that you remember are often amazing and surprising sometimes. For example I remember riding in the back of my mom’s ‘piece of crap’ (her words, not mine) Oldsmobile listening to Michael Bolton tapes and Anita Baker heavily. I think that’s where I first learned to love everything and everyone in music. It might even surprise you that I know the words to Fleetwood Mac songs as well as rap lyrics.

This was her way, although she’d never said it, of making us (that is, my sister and I) eclectic people. I like to be so bold as to think that it worked.

But music has always been tied to memory. You tend to remember the good albums.

Case in point…

I think I saw one of those twelve CD deals for penny flyers in the back of an EBONY magazine. Being younger and being a kid I filled it out with a fraudulent name and sent off for them.

Lucius B. Kennedy was the alias back then.

I had completely forgotten about them until my mom had shown me the package. It was pretty foolish for me to even attempt to say it wasn’t me. Hell, I was the only in the house whose name started with an L. So I was honest about it.

She didn’t strike me as angry. She was willing to laugh it off.

This was until she opened the box.

Dammit.

The discs in the box were: Ludacris, Beyonce, Steely Dan, Barry White, OutKast, Sean Paul, Incubus, U2, R. Kelly, Jaheim, and some others that elude me.

She let my sister keep the music I’d promised her, despite the parental advisory labels. I guess she figured that Sean Paul’s accent made him unintelligible enough that any profanity he used would be overlooked. The R. Kelly thing may have been a mistake given her age. But that’s neither here nor there.

Mom gladly took the Barry White and the Steely Dan since she a was lifelong fan. She’d even grown to like Jaheim due to radio airplay and the distance she had to drive to work.

The Incubus and U2 were given over without much argument. Same with the Beyonce CD. When we reached Luda and OutKast she immediately took them.

“I don’t want you listening to that rap crap…”

Eventually I found them and I was singing the lyrics to Word Of Mouf and Stankonia religiously.

(Quietly, of course…)

This was until Mom caught me and soundly thrashed me.

Ahh, wonderful memories…