Am I nostalgic?

Is anybody NOT nostalgic, at least a little, at least in some weird ways?

When I think of my friends, or I so much as say the words, my brain rushes to fill in, “me-and-my-me-and-my-me-and-my-me-and-my-me-and-my-FRIENDS.”

I still have the red cassette case. I still smell green Palmolive dish soap and feel the cushy green Walkman headphone material resting on my ears when I see it. I don’t miss it so much as I know it.

As an adult, the lyrics are just as dumb as every other Red Hot Chili Peppers song. There’s nothing here to quote, really, but I do love the casual friends (by name) shot-outs in the verses.

I bet they loved it. I bet the band thought it was so cool and the friends got a good laugh at it the first time they heard it, and any time they were at a show and got to that part.

The song wasn’t written for the charts.

It was written for the bass intro to be awesome. It was written for the wah-na guitar riff flex. It was written for Kiedis to rap (?) and the gang vocal to be punk rock stupid.

It probably only sticks to me because I heard it so many times when I was 10 or 12 years old. Chicken nuggets for the soul. And when you have it on - the stereo panning, for the headphone masterpiece win, they must have been so stoked about that in the studio.

Plus - the key change? Come on. It’s like I forget it’s in here until I play it all the way through. As much as I also forget about the “Third Stone from the Sun” wannabe vamp of a bridge because every song is supposed to have a bridge, right?

But it sticks with me, and I associate it with me and my friends, and based on the fairly solid assumption that this is all the song was ever for, I am going to continue to hold it in very, very high regard.