My Life in Songs

​This post started with a search link that was supposed to find the most popular song on the day you were born. When I finally checked, it stopped working. Bummer!
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But I didn’t quit. I used the search bar to ask, “What was the #1 song in May of 1959?” It worked! Follow me back in time, and I’ll share the play list of my life.

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​Part 1 – From Birth to Graduation: These three songs were popular in May of 1959. That’s the month I was born. I didn’t recognize the titles, but when I played them, I remembered two – the first and the last. My sympathies to the one in the middle – I didn’t remember it at all. 
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Fast forward to May of 1977. That’s when I graduated from Wapakoneta Senior High, and these were the songs I listened to on the radio. I had to look up two but recognized them right away.  

My favorites – Don’t Leave Me This Way, Southern Nights, Sir Duke, and I’m Your Boogie Man. They all made my toes tap.
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Fast forward to May/June of 1981. It was time for another graduation. I’d finished college and graduated from The Ohio State University.

I remember every single song, and my favorites have a beat you can dance to – Rapture, Kiss on My List, Morning Train, and Stars on 45 Medley.

​ Part 2 – A Family Affair: My husband and I got married back in June of 1985. It’s hard to believe that we’ll celebrate our fortieth anniversary in two short years.

Looking at both rows of songs, most of them weren’t my favorites. Ballads are OK, but I love dance music. I managed to find three oldies and goodies – We are the World, Everybody Wants to Rule the World (No, I never did), and Sussudio.
 

In May of 1987 I was getting ready to become a new mom. One of my all-time favorite songs was I Knew You Were Waiting because I was waiting, to have a baby boy.

I also loved Head to Toe and I Wanna Dance with Somebody. They both made my feet tap, but I was too tired to dance. I had a new baby to take care of. 

My second baby boy arrived in November of 1989. These songs were on the radio, lots of ballads, but I still found two favorites . . . Miss You Much and Blame It on the Rain.

There was another song that became an all-time favorite, but it’s not on this screenshot – Nothing’s Going to Stop Us Now by Starship. It’s how I felt about my new baby boy. 

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In March of 1992 I was waiting on a baby girl. No radio in the car . . . I had Disney songs on tape playing for the kids.

This screenshot has a lot of ballads, but these three still found their way into my memory – Black or White, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me, and I’m Too Sexy (It made me laugh). My only wish – that I had a special song for my daughter.

Part 3 – My Pursuit of Writing: In June of 2007 I started writing, all because I held a bat on a mop in Germany. That experience made me start, and it took me two years to finish the bat’s story.  I was still teaching all week and writing on the weekends.

I knew the songs on this screenshot, but they weren’t my favorites. There were other songs I liked better.

​I finished that bat story in 2009. It was exciting, but I’d pushed it as far as I could with my friends. I needed to find someone who could tell me what was good, and what to work on. I took it to Highlights in July. There was something there, but I had a lot to learn about how to write a children’s book.

I checked out two of these song titles, but it turns out I knew them all from the radio. They were OK, but my favorite from 2009 was not even on the list. The title – Just Dance. It figures a song about dance would be my favorite.
 

​In 2019 I published my first book, Neil Armstrong’s Wind Tunnel Dream. I decided to write it in 2018. That’s also when I decided to self-publish. It was the only way I could get my story out in time for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.  It’s my bestselling book so far!

There was only one song to make it to #1 over the summer of 2019 – Old Town Road. I’d heard of it, but I didn’t recognize the lyrics or the melody. The other song titles were # 1 in the years following 2019. I wish I recognized them too.