So I have decided to limit my music postings to under 200 words or so, as my Steve Winwood post upon further review begins to ramble like a priest giving the homily at 12:00 mass whose football team isn't playing until the 4:00 game. Today, I wanted to briefly mention one of the my favorite songs where the title captures an emotion that I think we have all felt.

Is She Really Going Out With Him by Joe Jackson

This emotion, I can guarantee, I knew of before I ever heard the song. I remember what was the exact moment. In 1990, there was big news in Concord NH. They opened a mall. It was actually a pretty crappy mall, the kind where the food court doesn't rate real franchises. The kind where there are too many stores that sell Mexican throws and hacky sacks. So my mother offered to allow me and a friend to go to the mall so I could spend my birthday money.

I think we had three hours there. Unfortunately in 15 minutes I had pretty much seen all I wanted to see, This left me a lot of time to figure out how I was going to spend the 31 dollars I had. I think I ended up buying a book, a George Carlin tape, and spending 5 dollars on video games. What that also left was a lot of time for my friend and I to people watch, which at 14 years old meant look at girls. By the start of hour two at the mall, the two of us had narrowed down a list of store clerks we found attractive and the best route to take around the mall to see them with the least amount of walking. By hour three we were staving off boredom, as even the most girl obsessed 14 year old can only look at the Chess King clerk for so long on a Wednesday afternoon in August, before even he feels a bit creeped out by his actions.

So anyhow we kind of walked the mall some more and then with 25 minutes on the clock before my mom would pull up in her minivan and take me back so I could listen to Carlin riff for hours on end, it happened. I saw the girl who at that point I was going to pledge my life to. She had long strawberry blonde hair. She had a tan. She had her jeans rolled so tight into her sock that she was definitely losing circulation. She was my Winnie Cooper. This was going to be the girl who on the first day of high school I would put a picture of in my locker.

Then coming out of the Gap is this doofus, not that I wasn't or am still not a doofus, but he had advanced stage doofus. He was the kind of kid who had everything out of proportion. He had really big glasses on a tiny head, he had a really long torso but stubby legs, and if my memory is what I think it is he had on one of those T-shirts that if you squeezed it with warm hands it would change colors. (I state that, but if you are that doofus and remember this day in August of 1990 and claim you never had one of those T-shirts then I am sorry, believe me I am not trying to James Frey my 4 regular readers). Then he made a move that was so brazen it still sticks with me 16 years later. He calmly walked right up to her and he kissed her, not on the cheek but on the mouth. At that moment I knew exactly what Joe Jackson sings about.