Not Exactly a Madeleine

I felt like Marcel Proust yesterday. That isn't exactly something I can say everyday but yesterday, I felt like him. Proust was a French author who's most famous piece of work was In Search of Lost Time, a book published in seven volumes from 1913-1927. It was a book exploring the conception of involuntary memory. I've read the first volume but I haven't gotten around to the other six. In the first volume, Proust took a bite of a madeleine, a type of a cake-like cookie, and from that one bite, it opened up a wave of memories for him, enough to write seven books worth. If you've seen the movie Little Miss Sunshine, Steven Carell's character, Frank, is the number one Proust scholar in the United States. Now you know who the hell Proust is when it's mentioned.

Anyway, I felt like that yesterday. I was going through my cd collection, or rather the cds that I had brought from me to Indiana from Ohio considering I still have a lot of cds in my old room, and I found one that I hadn't listened to in what had to be years. I put it into my stereo in the living room and just listening to it again, it made me smile and remember things from high school that I probably wouldn't have thought of otherwise. The album is simply called New Found Glory and it is the band's album from September of 2000. I was a junior in high school at that time. New Found Glory is one of my favorite bands. I have all of their cds and I have almost all of their songs memorized. This is one of the bands that when they have a new cd coming out, I put the release date on my calendar so I won't forget. Listening to them makes me happy. Yesterday, as I listened to the cd I hadn't heard probably since high school, I was not only surprised to see that I still knew all of the songs by heart, but I started remembering things as if this cd was a background soundtrack.

I remembered making mixed tapes with songs Sincerely Me, Hit or Miss, and Dressed to Kill on them and then blaring them in my friends' cars as we sang along. I remembered cutting class with my friend Tim and going to Dairy Queen. I remembered leaning against Randy's car after he locked the keys inside and he had to use a coat hanger to open the door. It had scared me how skilled he seemed to be breaking into his own car. I remembered being in D.E.A.D.S. and being stuck in the band room with my closest friends after a downpour as we all took apart our drums so the wood wouldn't be ruined from the water. I remembered drinking nothing but grape soda and making stupid dances up with Scottie. I remembered how much fun I had in high school. All from listening to a cd I had had for years. I couldn't write up seven volumes from listening to it but take that Marcel Proust!