Legos, Musicals, and STP

When I was younger, I liked Legos, musicals, and Stone Temple Pilots. Oh, the hours I'd spend uncomfortably perched upon a thin carpet covering our 1/2 remodeled basement floor sifting through pieces upon pieces of small plastic bricks. They made a horrible music as you pushed them around - a sound I can only imagine curled my parents' ear drums. But I was mesmerized by the sound, the search for that perfect brick, to add to the perfect knob of the perfect piece on the soon-to-be-perfect Lego creation. As I grew older, my Lego collection slowed its growth. I spent more of my funds on soccer spikes, gifts for my girlfriend, and gas money. Legos seemed sort of humorous, as I aged.

I tried out for a high school musical, Hello Dolly, when I was a junior. Landed a lead role. The daily practices, the warm-up routine, the constant company of my opposite actors. Preparing for those three magical nights of live performance made me feel tired; like I was treading through a thick cornfield in early October with a dog on my ass, chasing me toward some end. The payoff? Oh yeah, it was there. Get more than three people to clap and cheer for you because of something you just did that they didn't have the nerve to do. You'll see. By the time I could buy a six pack at Tops Supermarket, musicals seemed a bit dorky.

Stone Temple Pilots, on cassette tape in my brand new Sony Walkman. It had digital FM and AM tuning, and a tape deck that automatically reversed - so you never had to manually flip the tape. I could listen to STP forever. I remember blasting the comforting beats into headphones, reading a Dale Brown book about a stealth airplane. This was before the public knew about the SR-71, mind you. On my wedding day, STP wasn't on the playlist - too heavy and unapproachable for a husband to introduce to his wife.

Now, I'm an adult. A father, professional, who manages his money carefully and always remembers to call his mom on a regular basis. I wear a Citizen watch and drive a reliable care with 153,000 miles gently worn into its four cylinders. I compost for God's sake!

...I know you want what's on my mind. I know you like what's on my mind....

Wait, what's that? Like a tugboat's whistle through a dense Portsmouth harbor fog, a steady unapproachable heavy noise fills my headphones as I type.

...I said I wanna get next to you...

Oh yeah. STP blaring into my open, welcoming old ears. I love it. I love how I can use a tugboat and fog analogy to describe music through headphones. I would have never thought to do that in high school. Likewise, I never would have mused it would take me years to realize that growing up does not change a man. You don't grow into someone else as you age. You are always that same clay you were born of. It molds, reshapes, dries, moistens, dries again in a different configuration; and the same clay - those Legos, musicals, and STP songs - remains.