music in the background

Weirdly, popular music has never been a big part of my life.  I didn't care for lots of music when I was younger and I was terrible at understanding the lyrics, let alone learning them.  This has always been a source of embarrassment for me - because it's a conversation starter where people get to understand what kind of person you are and thread in many groups that draws personalities together, and a conversation I could never join.  Sympathetic people would try to reel me in by fishing through a whole genre of song titles trying to find one I liked or even knew - and I would sometimes try to play along, but mostly it just became more and more embarrassing ending in this awkward silence where a person tried to process the idea of how a young person could be so ignorant about music.  Older people said: ah, you're just to young for that song.  My peers would say: You don't know that song?!?  And younger people would say the same and add: Ms! You out of it.  Once I was at a bar my friend was waitressing at ... it was early evening and the bartender gave my $5 asking me to choose  a line up for the evening from the Jukebox.  I tried to decline but he pushed the money saying, "I'm sure you can find something to play."  I flipped through the CDs trying to distract my friend from her job long enough to get some decent suggestions.  She said, "Go with so-and-so, you can't go wrong with him."  So I found the artist she had suggested, and then had to choose one of his hundreds of songs ... I was so stressed at the impending embarrassment.  I had no idea if these songs were popular or not, bar appropriate or not.  The first song started playing and I just started choosing song after song blind, then quickly sat down not wanting to be associated with the one that picked that song not the jukebox - but secretly hoping my musical lottery picks would make people nod at my prowess.  To my horror, the bartender went over to the jukebox and unplugged it.

This writing exercise gave a first sentence prompt (shown in bold) - I was to build on the description for a thousand words - but instead I experimented with a few memories.

The first time I heard From a Distance by Bette Middler (place and action) I was in the 7th grade riding the district's yellow school bus in the dead of Minnesota's winter.  It was so cold even the sun was hesitant to come up.  Even though the bus had driven 15 or 20 minutes out to the country to pick us up, the only difference from the temperature outside was there was no wind.  I sat on my gloved hands to keep a barrier between my bottom and the unforgiving chill of the vinyl seats.  Our road was well maintained, but nonetheless, it was gravel and the thin window rattled against their metal casings, echoing in the hollow cold of the bus with Bette Middler as we barreled down 110th street.  I really really hated that song.  

The first time I heard A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton I was standing in the crowds at the PNC Art Center theater in New Jersey waiting for Dave Matthew's concert to begin.  This small girl came on stage or at least she looked tiny on the bare stage in her white dress and dwarfed by a grand piano.  I stood and listened to her numbly.  It was August 17th, 2002 and I had just received a text that my best friend had checked herself into the hospital for attempted suicide.

The first time I heard Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville I was plastered outside of the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts.  It was embarrassing that I had never even heard of him - but friends of friends had invited me along in their limo to drink a tub of margaritas during the hour and half drive - so by the time we got there the girls with the coconut bras and the guys with their Hawaiian shirts all blurred and swirled together.