The Dangers of Nostalgia

Welcome to the jungle
It gets worse here everyday
Ya learn ta live like an animal
In the jungle where we play
If you got a hunger for what you see
You'll take it eventually
You can have anything you want
But you better not take it from me Guns N' Roses

I graduated from high school in 1988, just as hair bands were fading away and grunge was getting its foot in the door. There was a presidential election (ah, Dukkakis, with your lovely monobrow*) and we hadn't yet seen the Berlin wall fall.

My senior year was filled, as all of ours probably are, with moments that the old folks told us were "MOMENTS". The prom (which for me was really lame) graduation. Senior this, senior that. A senior trip, senior "breakfast," senior-itis. Senior skip-day (which coincided with the day the local recruiters came to school to deliver the ASVAB-- which I still question.... why the heck were we required to be there to take a military entrance exam? Hmmmm? Which I eventually took anyway, but that's another story). We filled out forms for our yearbook's "moments." Class Leader, Most Likely to Succeed... Class Poet**. The one I actually remember best was Class Song.

My friends and I organized a campaign to write-in "Grab it Like You Want It" by L'Trimm as the song. I mean, it has its moments, its inspirational lyrics, right?

You say you want to push it but your pushing is through
girl let's push you aside and show you what to do
you've got to grab it
grab it like you want it

You do have to grab it like you want it. Grab life by the balls, go out and get it. Much less pessimistic and much less sappy than the other "choices" we had. (Note that we very cleverly anticipated the "what is is" conversation of later years.) What is "it?" In the song, I guess "it" has something to do with sex, which was why I'm sure even if we got more than the three or four votes our friends managed to write in, the officials would never have let it fly. But if you define "IT" as the marrow of life, the substance of being everything that is within your potential-- well. Then of course you have to GRAB IT.

One of the "official" choices was "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses. The other, (which won because I apparently went to high school with a bunch of sentimental saps who thought "Nobody puts Baby in the corner" was a helluva great bit of writing but missed wholly the sleezy sexuality of "And you're a very sexy girl/That's very hard to please. . .Feel my, my, my serpentine) was "I've Had the Time of My Life." (Frankly, high school was far from the time of my life, so that would never have gotten my vote, but there you have it.)

This morning, painting my fingernails and watching VH-1's "other" channel, where they actually still play videos instead of having reality TV & "I Love the "insert decade"" series, they played a Guns N' Roses "twofer" including "Welcome to the Jungle." Axl Rose arrives on the bus to the "big city" where women wear seamed pantyhose and high patent leather "f"-me stiletto pumps, and young, naive Axl is shown with a hay-stem in his mouth, baseball cap, flannel shirt wrapped around his be-jeaned waist. He is The Innocent: naive, young, fresh faced and falling into the trap of the sleezy guy with too much hair gel. He transforms to wacky hair Axl moments later to scream into the microphone, and we nod knowingly, alerted by the transformation of his hair from longhaired, sweet farmboy to a man with entirely too much hair product*** that yes, yes, the Jungle got him. He's jaded, no longer the peach-faced innocent from (presumably) the Midwest. Ah, the jungle is rough, I tell ya! One minute, you're on Casey Casem, the next it's some sneery guy from Seattle bitching about how miserable he is and selling millions of records about not selling out. Sigh. It's a cruel world.

I hated Guns N' Roses back then. I wasn't really IN to any music, other than perhaps punk-ish bands like the Dead Milkmen, the Dead Kennedys, Violent Femmes, and the like. But even that stretches the idea of being "in" to music. I liked stuff that sounded good, but other than Prince, I can't recall owning any other albums that really really meant anything to me. (Except for maybe Corey Hart. But that's for a different reason entirely unrelated to this post.)

But this morning, almost 20 years later (ugh! don't say that again) I found myself waxing nostalgic about Axl's little song. Thinking of how much closer to reality that song really is.

Welcome to the jungle
We take it day by day
If you want it you're gonna bleed
But it's the price you pay

See? That part of the song gets it.... if you want it, you've got to sacrifice something. You're gonna bleed, one way or the other-- spiritually, or through hard work, or literally. It is a jungle out there, with survival of the fittest still happening and the guy with the(loosely defined) best hair getting the hottest supermodels (at least for a while).

So yes, I've indulged myself this morning in thinking about my youth, the days when I wasn't exactly sure how I was gonna manage it, but knew somehow I'd succeed. When I was a bit stupid about love, but a bit jaded about other things, and figured by the time I was the age I am now (35, thank you for asking) I would be in an entirely different world. And I am.

But nostalgia, making me think fondly of Axl & Guns N' Roses? Ah, that is, my friends, dangerous. Who knows, next thing you know I'll be wistfully crooning along with that lame-ass song from Dirty Dancing.

**********

*Two words: eyebrow waxing. That's all... just think about it. How could we ever have thought about electing him; he so did not have Presidential Hair.
**which I'm still bitter over; don't discuss it with me, please. :)
***Most likely Aussie Scrunch Spray-- remember how big that was in the day? Mmm. And it smelled like what, grapes? I forget, but it smelled yummy and I can still remember it warring with the scent of cigarettes in the girls' bathroom.