Flashback.

Most people in my office have music playing at their desks during the day. The guy a couple cubes down enjoys a sort of fusion of pop/punk/rock, while the girl who used to sit behind me preferred R&B. Brian, whose cube is next to mine, usually alternates between Howard Stern, Phillies games, and classic rock. And if I don't have my own music playing, I can still usually tune out the surrounding noise.

Yesterday, as I was going about my business, I suddenly felt a little subconscious thrill of excitement. As I tried to figure out what could be the cause of this reaction, I focused on the sound coming from Brian's speakers - it was the intro to "The Heart of Rock and Roll" by Huey Lewis and the News. Much like my Pavlovian response to Mannheim Steamroller, hearing this song caused a flashback to childhood glee, when my Dad would put it on for us kids to dance around to. I would be sitting in the family room or somewhere in my night gown, and from the living room there would suddenly come the deep, steady pulse of the heartbeat. The volume would be cranked up so you could hear it from pretty much anywhere in the house. The excitement it created was immense. We'd scramble into the living room from wherever we were, and jump and dance around in anticipation of that first huge swell of synthesizers that never failed to whip us into a frenzy.

I guess it proves Huey's thesis that, all these years later, "It's still that same old rock and roll music / That really, really drives 'em wild."