Youth is Wasted on the Old

I just had one of those moments where I wondered what the heck my parents were thinking.

Kids are malleable, both physically and meta-, and can be taught pretty much anything. This is proven by the fact that children can pick up foreign languages very quickly up until adolescence, right? If there is any doubt in your mind at all as to the ability for a child to effectively retain vast amounts of information, I present myself as an exhibit, to be presented... right... now.

My parents could have had me in training to be a linguist, a scriptorian, or heck, even a geographer, like my friend Bryce's two-year-old niece. But no, I was given a different gift, which isn't quite as handy but perhaps, at times, more entertaining.

I learned the lyrics to Neil Diamond songs.

I don't remember how exactly I fell into this path. All I know is that my mom owned some Neil Diamond tapes, namely "The Jazz Singer" soundtrack, "Headed for the Future," and a couple of his "Greatest Hits" albums, and somehow I got hooked. I listened to him running errands with my mom, on road trips, doing chores, or just plain sitting around.

I was THREE-YEARS-OLD when I started strutting around the house singing at the top of my lungs, "Baby, tonight by the fire- all alone, you and I!" I knew not of the real, lusty meaning of what I sang, I just sang it. And I did it hard core, because I lived hard core.

All those songs I sang along to are still imbedded in my memory, even ones I haven't heard in at least seven years, maybe even a decade. Part of me feels at home when the '80s Neil starts playing on my Launchcast station. Songs like "Robert E. Lee" or "Hello Again" are like this oddly-comfortably blanket of nostalgia for me. And whenever I think about my past dating experiences, it's not very long before I think to myself, "Love on the rocks, Shark. It ain't no big surprise."

Of course, all this influence inspired me to begin writing music at a young age. Somewhere in a box we have an audio recording of 6-year-old Shark singing his first attempt at being a pop star:

"Oh my sweetie pie,
I want you to be my sweetie pie!
I've been gone
for three weeks!"

And that, in essence, is what makes me the Shark.