1987 Lincoln - A Playlist

Remember sitting in the backseat? Remember watching the rear view reflection of your mother putting on her lipstick? The way she pressed her red lips together after? The pucker sound? Remember what was on the radio? I do.

It wasn't rock. And it wasn't disco either. I remember a sort of synth-laced lullaby caught somewhere between easy listening and straight-up pop. Billy Ocean, Crowded House, Simply Red, TOTO, Hall & Oates. A parade of ear candy to a generation of would-be-Boomers and their Gen-X offspring sitting in the backseat sucking up second-hand smoke and Soft Cell.

It was an 87 Lincoln with blue upholstery. Was it suede? Or maybe velour? I don't know. But it was soft and changed its luster if I ran my fingers across the fibres so that I could draw on it and then erase it with the sweep of my hand. This backseat was my domain. My fiefdom. And the incubator in which I ripened through the various phases of an awkward late 80's adolescence.

Those were simpler years. Before the bullies, the first kiss, and the F in math class. Before my grandparents died. Before puberty. Before the sudden and disorienting realization that young adulthood, and all its horrors and boobytraps, was just around the corner and there wasn't a single god damned thing that anyone could do about it. Not even my mom.

Fact is, we were all the kid in the backseat at some point. Head floating above the clouds. Oblivious. Naive. Happy.

And now, during the cruel and unusual punishment that is daily adult life, it's easy to forget about that kid. To assume he's gone. Slipped away. Unceremoniously cannibalized by the shit-flinging world around him. But of course, he's not gone. He's still there, inside, drawing funny faces in the upholstery. And when we remember that the kid in the backseat is still with us, the burden of adult life gets momentarily lighter.