Sounds of Summer 2008

I had just finished my junior year of high school and started my first full time job ever, lifeguarding at a neighborhood pool. There were only two guards so we both had to work 6 days a week 8 hours a day. That's a lot of time to sit and listen to different pitches of whiny children screaming their discontent every time one of them is forcibly removed from the pool by their parents. The other guard I worked with was much more seasoned and on day three brought in a radio. He was the boss so he set the station to classic rock, not something I would have picked. Up until this point, my knowledge of classic rock was limited to what I heard on Guitar Hero, so this was basically a whole new listening experience for me. The music was fantastic, not only because it's classic rock, they had given us something to break up the monotony of our day. We were always looking for something to do while there were only one or two in the pool (which happened quite frequently) They had a show from 4-5 called "bumper-to-bumper" where they played a song and the next song they would play had to start with the last letter from the first song's title. That was always interesting. At some point in June, we heard Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover" (one I knew from Guitar Hero) and both of us really liked. A couple of weeks passed and we hadn't heard that song again so we decided to call in and request it. Easier said than done. We called dozens of times throughout June, July and finally in August we got through and twenty minutes or so later, there was our song. So for me, that summer was characterized by rock and that radio station. It distracted us from the constant heat of summer and gave us a way to get to know each other better. To this day, rock music is a comforting genre to me, and a frequent companion on my long car trips.