Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be


I once read that if you want to sell someone a piano, you figure out what was on the radio when they were eighteen and play it as part of the pitch.  The mark will get all dreamy-eyed and think back to their youth and drop several grand, just out of wistfulness.



This assumes, of course, that they actually enjoyed being eighteen, when they were young and free and having wild, drunken sex on the hoods of moving cars.  Instead of, say, sitting inside, writing magazine games on their Atari 400.



And this occurred to me recently, when I was trapped in some department store somewhere and they started piping Cutting Crew through the overheads.  Suddenly, I got all dreamy-eyed and started thinking about the vertical-bank period and the free-memory Page 6.



But I also realized, after slightly over twenty years, that the lyrics are:



Ah!
I just died in your arms tonight
I must have been something I said
I should have walked away



Instead of what I've always heard in my head:



Ah!
I just died in your arms tonight
I must have been something I ate
I should have walked away



Somehow I think I'm never going to buy a piano.



 




★