The Trooper

My daughter brought her boyfriend home to visit for a couple of days. Mike is quiet and very respectful. He calls me Mr. K------. He just graduated from law school.

When Mike left, he gave me a gift: an Iron Maiden t-shirt! It’s the one with The Trooper image.



This could be the plot of a particularly twisted sitcom: girlfriend’s dad is a middle-aged metal fan. Boyfriend is a conservative young guy. Boyfriend's new job as a prosecutor with the Florida State Attorney's office entitles him to carry a badge and gun when he visits crime scenes. We see the handsome young man wandering befuddled through the CD Extreme music store, searching... searching everywhere for an Iron Maiden t-shirt. When presented with the gift t-shirt, Dad is delighted. He promises to wear it to Ozzfest, with the right sleeve rolled up to display his tattoo.

All of this is true.

Deserted Cities of the Heart

This week’s Cream concert and the song Deserted Cities of the Heart has reopened old wounds.

Well, here’s how it was. As freshmen in college, my roommate and I were both in the same predicament: freshman girls didn’t seem to be interested in us. They were after the older guys. We’d sit around our dorm room, listening to the live version of Deserted Cities of the Heart and telling lies about how we had all sorts of girls interested in us in high school.

Being an English major, one night I explained the linkage between our situation and this lyric:

"On this street, where time has died
The golden treat you never tried
In times of old, in days gone by,
If I could catch your dancing eye

It was on the way
On the road to dreams
Now my heart’s drowned in no love streams."

We, ourselves, were the golden treat that all those college girls never tried.