Night Moves

A recent post on dating had the title of an old Meatloaf song, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights. I thought it was appropriate and fit my mood at the time since I did that post a little tongue in cheek. That is a good song and I like it a lot, but like so many guys my age, that song is not the best one for capturing the feel for that period of my life. That credit belongs to Night Moves.**

I was a little too tall
Could’ve used a few pounds
--- A note to Bob Seger. I don't need them anymore, in fact I have a few to spare.

Tight pants points hardly renown
--- At some point, this is the number one concern of almost every guy entering his teen years.

She was a black-haired beauty with big dark eyes
And points all her own sitting way up high
Way up firm and high
--- Hopefully nobody needs to have this part explained to them.

Out past the cornfields where the woods got heavy
---Or tobacco field, or barn, or Notchin Hill, or wherever.

Out in the back seat of my 60 chevy
--- When was the last time you willingly got in the back seat for any reason?

Workin on mysteries without any clues
--- Very few clues at all, or if there were I couldn't read them. However I did have a very inquisitive mind.

Workin on our night moves
Tryin to make some front page drive-in news
--- Ahh, here we are back at the drive in again. Front page news from the back row.

Workin on our night moves
In the summertime
In the sweet summertime, summertime

We weren’t in love, oh no, far from it
--- But in all honesty, at the time we probably thought we were.

We weren’t searchin for some pie in the sky summit
---Nope, definately not pie in the sky, but it was undoubtably a pinnacle.

We were just young and restless and bored
Livin by the sword
---I don't believe I was bored. To me this line never really fit. If you were bored you would be doing all this because there was nothing else to do (which may have some validity to it), but as I recall, it didn't matter if there was anything else to do or not; this came first. But then, who am I to tell Bob how to write a song?

And we’d steal away every chance we could
To backroom, alley or trusty woods
---See? It almost contradicts itself. It appears that things weren't exactly all that boring after all. You remember this don't you? Every chance you got, almost every place you were, was fair game for at least thinking about giving it a try. What happens to that feeling? Maybe that's the boring part Bob was talking about.

I used her, she used me
But neither one cared
We were gettin our share
--- In retrospect it might appear that each one was using the other, but not at the moment. We were there because that's where we wanted to be and who we wanted to be there with. Wasn't it?

Workin on our night moves
Tryin to lose the awkward teenage blues
--- And man were they ever awkward!

Workin on our night moves
And it was summertime

And oh the wonder
We felt the lightning
And we waited on the thunder
Waited on the thunder
--- We felt the heat and the passion, but were we absolutely sure it was the real thing? Were we lucky enough to ever really feel the thunder, the part that would leave little doubt that this was THE one for us?

I awoke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain’t it funny how the night moves
When you just don’t seem to have as much to lose
---At the time it seemed so big, so consuming. It was like if something happened that might end it, it was the end of the world. Everything seemed to be riding on each relationship. If one ended you licked your wounds, put on your best smiling face to try and make your friends think it was no big deal, and told yourself you would go slower the next time, not get so involved. But then you suddenly found yourself grabbing at the next one like it might be your last chance. If you lost it, you lost everything. We carried more than our hearts in our hands, there was a lot to lose.

Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in
--- Now I’m older and this is my autumn. All those night moves come flooding back when I open the memory gates and let them. But are the memories good, or bad, or maybe a little bittersweet? That’s something we all have to answer for our own night moves.

**With apologies to Bob Seger.