Atticus   

“Holy crap, Rob—are you hearing this?”

“Yeah, but I don’t recognize it,” he said. “What is it?”

My brother and I were seated with his family and our parents in some popular local deli in Huntsville, Ala., and I couldn’t believe what was emanating from the speakers in the ceiling: “To Cut a Long Story Short” by Spandau Ballet.

If you grew up in Canada or in the suburb of a large U.S. city in the ‘80s, you probably have no idea why this makes me shake my head in disbelief every time this situation—an obscure British song getting airplay in the 21st century as if it had been a major American hit—occurs. You likely had a progressive Top 40 station that occasionally played those tracks.

But if you grew up like I did, in rural Alabama an hour from the nearest mall, your local station played only the hits and nothing more.

Until my parents purchased one of those gigantic satellite dishes in 1986, we didn’t even have MTV because my hometown didn’t have cable.

That’s why it was always by the strangest means that I would discover a British or Australian band I’d previously never heard of. Like the time I stayed up until the very last clip of the night on Friday Night Videos to see the No. 1 song in Australia, “Original Sin” by INXS. Or when my mom won a trip to the UK through her job and took me rather than my dad because he had already been to London several times on business. Or the mix tape I received from a pen pal in Dallas whose best friend had moved to England a few years earlier.

In seventh grade while taking the California Achievement Test, I had Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life” lodged firmly in my skull, thanks to seeing the video for it numerous times on TV-69 (not joking) in Atlanta the preceding weekend while visiting our family’s closest friends.

As a result, I was probably the only teenager within a 50-mile radius who owned a Depeche Mode T-shirt or had seen Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark in concert. To better illustrate how much I was in the minority, I should share with you our class song from my senior year: “Pour Some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard.

How my family didn’t know I was gay, I’ll never know. I’m pretty sure my classmates did, though, as most of the guys were always talking about “that weird queer shit” I listened to.

That’s why today I crack up every time I’m wolfing down a burrito in a Qdoba or walking to the multiplex at Northfield Stapleton and hear something like “The Love Cats” by The Cure, “From Pillar to Post” by Aztec Camera, “Bizarre Love Triangle” by New Order or “How Soon Is Now?” by The Smiths.

I’m imagining my classmates somewhere similar, with kids in tow, turning to their wives and asking, “What the hell is this?”