"Shoulder to the Wheel" • Saves The Day (by D.T. Robbins)

I make a playlist called “High School Shit” for when I feel nostalgic. 

My kids want to go for a ride and listen to it. They want to know more about when I was young.

I play the fun shit first. 

“M + M’s” - Blink 182

1998. We’re parked outside Elizabeth’s house. Her parents aren’t home. It was supposed to just be us until her best friend, Heather, crashed our hang. No boobs are touched and/or seen that night. 

The kids go, “Eww, Dad!!!” 

Next.

“If Only” - Goldfinger

1999. Two idiot friends and I try convincing girls we know that we’re Goldfinger and that we’d recorded this song at a local recording studio. They call bullshit. My friends get into a fight after the girls leave. I smoke a cigarette and watch, laughing as they beat the hell out of each other. 

“Really, Dad?” 

“Yeah, I was an idiot.”

I play songs that don’t have memories tied to them, just an ocean of good vibes. 

“Dwarf Invasion” - Reggie And The Full Effect

We drive through rows of tall, yellow flowers that serenade us in fake Finnish accents. My kids and I sing with a kind of blissful unseriousness that only adolescence offers.

“The D In Detroit” - The Anniversary

Grey clouds in sweatshirts with the hoodies pulled over their heads write songs confessing infinite love.

“Pretty Lush” - Glassjaw

2002. Daphne and I make out on her floor. It had been building for over a year. And when the making out was over, it was over too. 

“Jamie” - Weezer

2000. I tune my guitar down a half-step so I play the song the way Rivers Cuomo played it. I’m wearing a sweater vest, khaki pants, and thick-rimmed glasses—nerd rock personified. The girl I’m in love with from my art class watches me. 

My teenage daughter goes, “Slay.” 

 “Age Six Racer” - Dashboard Confessional

2001. My family takes pictures in my grandparents’ yard before my grandfather’s funeral. My mom and aunt are arguing. My uncle asks if I’m okay. I’d just found out about my grandfather’s affair. How years back he’d gotten the other woman pregnant. How she had an abortion and left the fetus in a shoebox on his doorstep. I wasn’t supposed to find out any of that. The same way I wasn’t supposed to find out about the three affairs my mother had while married to my father. The way I wasn’t supposed to find out a plethora of other dirty family secrets that become ghosts who haunt and oppress and make you wonder if you’re cursed with bad blood. 

A ringing from the speakers hits me like knives. Everything pulsates. I phase in and out of reality. My kids’ eyes go wide and terrified. 

“Dad, what’s wrong!?” 

It calms, passes. “Nothing,” I say. “I get a little fuzzy sometimes.” 

Next.

 “Proceed With Caution” - The New Amsterdams

2001. I’m walking home from school after I’d once again pissed my mom off and she refused to pick me up. My kids watch me mumble to myself, rehearsing an apology. 

The speakers cut out. My chest goes tight. 

My daughter hits skip. 

“Take Warning” - Operation Ivy

1998. Through a fog: the police station where my dad waits with the court order, the flight from California to Mississippi, my dad telling me that I’m never going back to California, two years of blackouts and cop calls and shoving matches down hallways, two more years of silent hatred after the judge reverses custody and I go back to California.

I turn off the music, pull to the side of the road. 

My kids go, “Dad?” 

I say I’m fine, I need a minute. I don’t tell them that nostalgia can sometimes make you sick. That it can sometimes evoke a fear that you’ll become the same monsters from your youth. That you’ll curse your kids with your own bad blood. That you’ll shroud them in your fog.

“We don’t have to listen,” the kids say. 

“No,” I say. “I’ve got one more.”

“Shoulder to the Wheel” – Saves The Day

The feedback’s crisp in the amp. The strings wail. The snare snaps. The distorted humbuckers like a wall of protection from whatever is and was broken. 

A sentiment reverberating through the years:

…and I say just go

please, Dave, just drive

get us as far as far can be

get us away from tonight 

D.T. Robbins is a writer and editor in chief of Rejection Letters Press. He is the author of multiple books including BIRDS AREN'T REAL (Maudlin House) and LEASING (House of Vlad). You can find more of his work at https://dtrobbins.com/