Jitterbug

HERE WE ARE NOW--ENTERTAIN US. I SAID, NOW!! TIME IS SHORT, PEOPLE!

How old does a song have to be before it's considered an oldie? I was raised on oldies radio stations. They played music from the 50's and 60's exclusively. I have one oldies station on my preset button on the radio in the car. One. Because that's all that's left.

This being the year of 2007, I heard a Bon Jovi song on the so called oldies station the other day. Bon Jovi? I was born in 1981; that makes me 26 years old. I'm not old but the radio station makes me feel old.

It makes me think of elderly people. They listen to old records and dance to songs titled Sing, Sing, Sing (think the old Chips Ahoy! commercials with all the trumpets and stuff) and the Jitterbug.

When I'm old and gray, the Jitterbug will be completely unheard off. We'll be putting in our old CDs in the player and our grandchildren will ask, "What's that? A shiny Frisbee?" Because Frisbee is timeless, so they'll know what that is, at least.

And instead of dancing the Jitterbug, we'll be bumping and grinding, withered and wrinkled, and fat in all the wrong places, all sexily like they do on MTV and the grand kids will ask, "What's MTV?"

And instead of Nat King Cole, we'll be grinding in our moo-moos and polyester pants to the tune of Snoop Doggy Dog and Nirvana. And the grand kids will moan and groan about the oldies we play with titles like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Enter Sandman" and "Humps".

The elderly head bangers will have ratty flannel shirts tied around their waists, careful not to entangle the sleeves in with the oxygen tanks. Blue hair will still be cool at our age, because it was cool in "our day".

Our piercings and tattoos will be stretched from here to eternity and we'll be talking about Iraq like it was WWII. Or WWIII--but we haven't gotten that far yet. We'll have long talks with our grand kids about how a pack of cigarettes used to be $5 and how we'd buy a 20 oz soda for $1.50

We will smell of Ben Gay and Jennifer Lopez perfume and we will bump n' grind in a nasty way until one of falls down to the tune of an AC/DC song.

In fact, now that I think about it, we will be the coolest old people in the history of the world.