Notes From Underground - #16Songs for the Days

It was a horrible flashback, the likes of which I should not want to experience again. For those of you who don't know, my day job (i.e. the one that pays) is High School English Teacher. I teach mostly seniors and my homeroom is seniors as well. Today we were gathering nominations for the class of '08's 'class song.' Dutifully writing down their suggestions, I wasn't paying a ton of attention to the actual songs until a girl squealed out "Oooh! How 'bout Boyz II Men's 'It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday?'"

Immediately I was transported back in time to two places at once. First, to middle school, the time of my life when Boyz II Men actually seemed to matter in the larger pop-cultural narrative. I remember sitting in front of my television and watching MTV, hoping for something productive ("C'mon, Cracker's 'Get On This!'") and seeing those four, Philly-bred would-be-heirs-to-Motown just singin' up a storm from video to video. I didn't have anything against Boyz II Men at that point. Nor do I now, really. It's harmless, inoffensive, background R&B. But then, flash forward to 1999, the year of my own high school graduation, and rather than taking advantage of our obvious, God-given right to, for the first time ever, legitimately have Prince's "1999" as a class song, we blow it and select "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday." Sentimental, downer, crap.

To be fair, I didn't help matters. My nomination had been the Replacements' "Anywhere's Better Than Here." That didn't go over well, so I had re-submitted Pulp's "The Day After the Revolution." References to Sheffield, England and such aside, I (at the time) thought it not a bad representation of what I saw in our graduation. So I voted for it. I mean, read the lyrics. It's not bad. "Tomorrow you will wake up to find that your whole life has changed. Although nothing looks different a revolution took place" is a great line for summing up a high school graduation.

I'm not bitter. Just disappointed, I suppose. The idea of a class song is to hopefully select something that will remind people of their high school experiences, will cause them to pause in that smokey bar when it comes on the jukebox, or on the radio in their car. Something to give them pause, just for a second, smile a wry smile, and go back to what they were doing. I know it's impossible to pick a song that would elicit that moment from every member of my, or anyone's, graduating class. I'm sure there are people in my class who hear Boyz II Men and actually do think back on high school with the reverence of someone looking through the burnishing haze of passing years. But not me.

For me, it's driving down Weddington Road in my 1988 Chevy Suburban, my good friend Andrew in the front passenger seat, Dylan's "Tombstone Blues" on the cassette player.

For me, it's riding shotgun with my friend Brad down International Drive while a live version of Danzig's "Mother" plays, and the guitar solo hits and Brad shouts out "John Christ on guitar!" The notes fill the car with bristling excitement for a reason I still don't understand.

For me, it's playing guitar in a coffee shop, some of my best friends and other onlookers singing along to the Ramones' "The KKK Took My Baby Away."

And countless other moments beside. None of those songs are emblematic of high school, but they represent my memories far better than a Boyz II Men song ever could. I have college songs, relationship songs, car songs, trip songs. They're all there as a soundtrack to my life.

If my students end up voting for Boyz II Men, more power to them. Hopefully it'll give them one of those moments like I mentioned. But for me, the teacher, the perennial person at school, who doesn't leave after four years, the last bittersweet lines of the Replacements' "Left of the Dial" comes to mind: "If I don't see you 'gain, well, I'll know why."

So, what are your songs? Share them in the comments.