Stumblin' In

On Monday’s I do something called cardio tennis. It’s 90 minutes of tennis games and drills with a teaching pro where the goal is to make you run around a lot. Tonight, it was hot 90 degrees, but we kept moving.

To help us move, the pro plays music, usually faster-paced, to keep us moving and bopping to a beat. Most of the music is fairly recent. Tonight, out of the blue, we go an oldie.

I noticed several players shake their heads as it came on, but I knew all the words. So I was pretending to sing (I didn’t want the other players to fall out of fear and horror if I actually sang) and one better and younger woman was too.

But we were the only ones. We stopped for a water break, the sweat dripping off our faces. Another person asked me, “What is this song?”

“It’s ‘Stumblin’ In’ by Suzi Quattro and Chris someone, though I can’t remember his last name.”

“Never heard of it,” someone else said.

The other person, the young woman who was singling along, said, “I know it. My parents paly it all the time. It was big when they were in elementary school they told me.”

Her parents.

In elementary school.

The song was a hit in 1979, when I was in my last year of high school.

I gamely kept on. “I know it was big hit. I think it peaked at like #4. It was there only US hit.”

“Do you like the older music?” the young woman who knew the song asked.

“I used to write a music column for my school newspaper,” I said.

“Your school what?” she asked staring blankly.

“Newspaper,” I replied, feeling very old.

“Oh, right,” she said, “I’ve heard of those. You wouldn’t have had internet then.” She nodded to herself, not realizing the impact of her words, the turning of the knife widening the gaping wound with each syllable. Then she asked, “How old were you?”

“I think I was 17,” I replied.

“Wow,” she said and then appraised me like a conscientious shopper checking the packaging for an expiration date. There was a short awkward silence.

“Norman,” I said aloud, remembering, but glad to break the silence. Two people stared at me. “Chris Norman. Norman sang this with Suzi Quatro.” They nodded somewhat blankly, as people do with useless trivia.

We started up cardio again. The music changed to Michael Jackson, which everyone seemed to know. Most everyone liked Flo Rida and even Taylor Swift. Then as we took another break, Mike Posner’s “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” came on. More people knew it, including me.

The young woman looked at me. “I think I was a teenager when this song came out. But just barely.”

I nodded. “It was 10 years ago.”

“Wow, I was 14,” she said, thinking. “How do you know all the words?

It was hard not to bristle. But that’s what people in their 60s do.

“I still like music. The song also peaked at #4 I think, and it earned Posner a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year. Posner hadn’t had a hit in a decade or so, and thought his career was over. It became his biggest hit.”

The young woman stared at me again. But given that I was now the official old-timer, I had to prove my credentials. “It also got to #1 on the Dance Chart. Spain’s leaders didn’t like the song, since it seemed to celebrate drug culture in Ibiza., which is in Southern Spain. I remember seeing Posner at the Grammys. He didn’t win, but he’d died his hair green for the event.”

I had scored a cool point as I could tell she was impressed.

“Wow,” she said. “You remember all that?”

‘Well, the Alzheimer’s hasn’t won yet,” I said drily. She laughed. “The song also had a poignancy to it. With that line following the title being, “To show Avicii I was cool. Avicii would die 3 years later of a drug overdose.”

“Huh,” she said. “I didn’t know that. Do you have Spotify?”

“Only if I spill sauce on my shirt and the Tide pen doesn’t work.”

She looked at me for a moment, then it sunk in, and she laughed.

“My folks don’t know any of the newer songs,” she said without thought.

“Maybe they are trapped in the late 70’s with ‘Night Fever’, I replied with slightest of hints of sarcasm. “It was a ‘Tragedy’, I’m sure.”

“What?” she asked blankly.

“Those are two songs by the Bee Gees from the late 70s. Both #1’s,”

“I think I’ve heard of them,” she said brightly.

I nodded, and decided to focus on tennis and quit while I was behind. I just put on my game face, kept mouthing the lyrics, and then as I waved good-bye, tried not to hobble to the car.

I was fortunate not to “Stumble Out.”