Nostalgia Machine

The other night at the local food court I found myself repressing an urge to run up behind a pair of teenage boys and pull their pants up to their waists. I'm a cranky old guy now. There is no way to diminish it. The motorized scooters racing up and down the street outside our house have special names like "damn" and "fershluginer" - German models, I suspect. And the music these kids listen to these days - well, I don't mind most of it, but do they have to play it so gosh darned loud?
I used to ride a Kawasaki Trail Boss 100cc motorcycle back and forth on the same half mile of road for hours when I was fourteen. I could say that the engine noise from that machine was only slightly more sonorous than the two-stroke motors that power the "damn" scoooters, but I would be kidding no one. Once I got my driver's license and graduated to four wheels, did I become a more responsible driver and nieghbor? Not really - just ask anyone who saw me fly up Grape street (not Glenwood since it had Stop signs) in my gold Chevy Vega. I learned to "peel out" in front of my parent's house. They must have been so proud.
My parents were clever in one regard - as each of us passed into puberty, we moved into the bedroom downstairs where the ground provided some insulation from the pounding and feverish beat of the rock and roll that helped form our soft brains and limit our response to dinner time. I learned to recognize all Beatles songs by listening to them through the floorboards from my older brother's stereo. I'm sure my younger brother still has sympathetic vibrations to "You Shook Me All Night Long" - to name just one oft-repeated tune of my youth.
It's the perspective that gets you. I feel a certain amount of Karma leveling as my neighbors play Mowtown into the wee hours of the night. It reflects directly to a night when we celebrated Bruce Springsteen's birthday until one in the morning, culminating by pounding out the beat of "Born to Run" with a plastic baseball bat on our floor - and our neighbor's ceiling - on a Thursday night.
Still, in retrospect, I'm pretty sure I always left the house with my belt on.