Mix Tape: Five Hundred Twenty-five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes

Today’s Daily Prompt from The Daily Post calls for creating a playlist of songs that describe your life. Well who doesn’t like putting a soundtrack to their life? So,  here’s my shot at it … 

I couldn’t tell you about other Gen-Xer’s parentage but I’m what happens when a Hippie and a Hood breed. Early pictures of my parents are just down right terrifying — Mom all tie-dye and daisy; Dad decked out looking like Dally from The Outsiders. Essentially I never stood a chance at whatever normalcy is, my Mom’s radio blared The Beatles and Dylan, while Dad was rocking out to Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. You spend your early childhood hearing “Rocky Raccoon checked in to his room only to find goodness gracious GREAT BALLS OF FIRE elemental penguin, burn my house, steal my car, all along the watchtower you ain’t nothing but a hound dog, I am the walrus!” and you tell me how much you crave a single Pepsi in blessed non-conflicting musical silence and if you couldn’t get that you’d probably turn in to a metal-head by the time you were ten too.

If it weren’t enough of a challenge being the child of battling musical decades my parents couldn’t seem to make up their minds where we should live. By the fourth grade I had gone to four elementary schools. High School was a bit better, I only went to two. You can imagine early on the difficulty making friends and of course it only got worse as I got older, being “strange” didn’t help much. I did get lucky enough to have a group of great friends during my teen years, those were great times and great memories but the greatest memories I have from then and them would be 1989-90, my senior year. Cliche as it is Kid Rock covers it, except I wasn’t in Detroit. I’ve never actually even been to Detroit. But I drank a lot out the bottle and sang a lot of Sweet Home Alabama. (Of course all that drinking is why I don’t now)

But like all good things that too had to end. The boyfriend was gone, the friends I “lost” when I moved (AGAIN) two months before graduating. So there I am in a new place, heartbroken, alone and starting over.

*hands you a tissue* I know, sad right?

Then from there I moved on, got married, had a couple of kids,

got divorced, found a new husband, had another kid. I’ve lived my life. It’s had its ups; it’s had its downs . It’s had its moments of despair  and moments of rage .  To create a playlist for my entire life would be impossible, each moment of my life has its own playlist. There’s always been a song to fit any given minute of my life, so how does one narrow it down to a handful of defining songs?

I don’t know. I do know who I am, that I’m made of scars; I’ve learned if I’m on the wrong path I can always turn around. And someday I’ll figure out just what I’m doing and where I’m headed next but for this moment I’m just …