Like a Rock

Isn’t it interesting how you can know someone, for a brief period of time or perhaps not that well, and still they pop into your thoughts randomly? In High School I had a massive crush on this boy… Okay I had a lot of crushes on a lot of boys as a teenager, but I never even managed to let this guy know that I thought he was cute and funny so it has always been one of those “wonder what could have been” memories in my head.

I once had an opportunity to let him know I liked him, but I let it slip by and another one never presented itself. It was sometime in our junior year and it was raining outside. We had a class together, I forget now what subject, and had both decided to skip class that day in favor of hanging out in the parking lot. What can I say, it happened a lot. Somehow he and I ended up sitting in his truck (he had a GREAT truck – some things never change) just the two of us, listening to the radio, talking and laughing. It was great.

Until the Bob Seger song, Like a Rock, came on the radio. I reached over, mid-sentence, and turned the volume up on his radio, pausing to say how much I loved this song. His response stunned me. He said, “right, because of the truck ads”, with a dismissive tone in his voice, “a girl like you probably never heard this song before that.” Now, admittedly, I HAD seen the Chevy commercials featuring this song, I was a teenager after all and spent inordinate amounts of time in front of the TV. But I was a fairly big Bob Seger fan and to be dismissed like that was rather… offensive.

Luckily for me, the bell rang signaling the end of the period so I just opened the door of the truck and hopped out. I wish I could say I said something witty, or sarcastic, or anything at all really, but I didn’t. But every time I hear a Seger song on the radio I turn it up, roll down the windows and sing along to my heart’s content, and think about a boy I used to know, with a charming lopsided grin, who never got the opportunity to discover how much fun it could be with “a girl like me”.