This is a song by a by a group out of Denton, Texas, called Bowling For Soup.  It was recorded in 2004.   This is 1985. 

Woo Hoo Hooooo!
Woo hoo hooooo!

Debbie just hit the wall
She never had it all
One Prozac a day
Husband's a CPA
Her dreams went out the door
When she turned 24.
Only been with one man
What happened to her plan?

She was gonna be an actress
She was gonna be a star
She was gonna shake her stuff
On the hood of White Snake's car
Her yellow SUV is now the enemy
Looks at her average life
And nothing, has been...
all right since

Bruce Springsteen, Madonna
Way before Nirvana
There was U2 and Blondie
And music still on MTV
Her two kids in high school
They tell her that she's uncool
Cuz she's still preoccupied
With 19, 19, 1985

Woo Hoo Hooooo!
(1985)
Woo Hoo Hooooo!

She’s seen all the classics
She knows every line
"Breakfast Club", "Pretty In Pink"
Even "St. Elmo's Fire"
She rocked out to Wham!
Not a big Limp Bizkit fan
Thought she'd get a hand
On a member of Duran Duran

Where's the mini-skirt made of snakeskin?
And who's the other guy that's singing in Van Halen?
When did reality become T.V.?
What ever happened to sitcoms, game shows,
(on the radio was)

Springsteen, Madonna
way before Nirvana
There was U2 and Blondie
And music still on MTV
Her two kids in high school
They tell her that she's uncool
Cuz she's still preoccupied
With 19, 19, 1985

Woo Hoo Hooooo!

She hates time, make it stop
When did Motley Crue become classic rock?
And when did Ozzy become an actor?
Please make this stop, stop, STOP(tick tick tick) and bring back

Bruce Springsteen, Madonna
Way before Nirvana
There was U2 and Blondie
And music still on MTV
Her two kids in high school
They tell her that she's uncool
Cuz she's still preoccupied
With 19, 19, 1985

 Mandy knocks on door:  Bruce, Your appointment is here. 
 
BRD:  Okay thanks.  Send her in. 

 BRD:  Welcome, Debbie, come in.   Have a seat.  Let me close out of the word processor here… Is it okay take your shoes off?  Well, I’d really rather you didn’t.   (Sigh of resignation)  Okay. 

 Let me say, before we start, it’s been wonderful having you and your husband worshiping with us.  Your presence means a lot.  We’re so glad you’re here.  As I said on the phone, though, you might get more out of this conversation if you were talking with Nancy.  She handles the women’s stuff.   But she’s off on the annual Women’s Retreat and from your phone call, it sounds as if there’s some urgency to your situation.  So what can we do to help you?

 Yes, I’ve heard your song.  Catchy tune.   You say it’s a pretty accurate description of your life?  Want to say more about that?   The song says it all, huh?  And you’ve hit the wall?  Okay.   Let’s talk about it.  Would I be correct in assuming you’re sort of disappointed at the way your life is turning out?  Where do you want to start?

 Your marriage?  Okay.  Let’s talk about your marriage.  You got married at 24.  Your husband is a Certified Public Accountant.  You have two kids in high school.   You thought you were going to “have it all” and feel like you “settled” instead.   Okay.  Let’s think about that….

 I’m hearing something a little dismissive as you talk about your husband and his employment.   I invite you to rethink that.   The Bible has a high doctrine of honorable work and invites people in whatever job they’re doing to do it with integrity, as if working for the Lord!   Is your husband a good CPA?  Yes?  An honorable man?  Yes?  I see him with you in church and heard recently he’s participating in our Thursday evening Men’s Bible Study group.   Great bunch of guys.
 

 If you’d allow me to share some observations, Debbie.  I think of the economic mess this country has been enduring, caused in part by shoddy accounting practices at the highest levels of big business.  Perhaps if your husband had been doing the accounting for some of these firms, he would have had the moral compass to urge fiscal caution with other people’s money.  As it is, it looks to me like this has been the mentality:  Let’s take grandma’s savings to the casino.  If we win, we’ll keep the profit.  If we lose, tough luck for grandma.    You say your husband’s not the kind of man to play such games with other people’s funds?  Good for him.   Sounds like he’d be a good fit with the people on our Finance Committee.

 Let me say this, also.  I was reading about this Christmas Day bombing attempt on that airplane.  Did you read that the terrorist’s father had reported concern about his son to the CIA, that the young man had been radicalized and might pose a threat?  Talk about raising a red flag!   How do you miss that?   But somebody did.  And the would-be-bomber was allowed to get on an airplane headed for the USA!  
Debbie, I don’t know where responsibility for all that lies, but we can be sure of this:  Somebody, somewhere didn’t do their job.   Maybe because they were thinking about another job they thought they should have had, a promotion they didn’t get, or some other disappointment, so they slipped up on the work entrusted to them in the now.  One person, not doing his or her job, came close to costing 300 lives and who knows what other fallout? 
 It’s my opinion, Debbie, that if people would think less about the jobs they don’t have and follow the scriptural admonition to do the job they’ve got, to the best of their God-given ability, the world would work a lot better.
 Which is to say:  I invite you to support your husband in being the very best CPA he can be, and be thankful for the living he’s making for you and your family.     

 Oh.  And your kids think you’re uncool?  Great!  You must be doing something right.  It’s not your job, Debbie, to be their friend.  It’s your job to be their mom.   
 

 You still want to talk about “Only been with one man”?  Again, it would be much more appropriate for you to discuss such things with Nancy, but I will say this and then hope we can move on quickly:   I think “only been with one” partner makes you among the most fortunate people of your generation. 
The New Testament teaches the virtue of monogamy, and the older I get, the more I understand why.  Human sexuality is a beautiful thing, Debbie, a gift from God, to be handled with care.  Handled carelessly, however, what was meant as a gift can be the cause of incredible damage.  
This culture, Debbie, has reduced sexuality to a sport, something to be graded like Olympic gymnastics.  Write this on your heart:  human sexuality was never meant to be measured in terms of quantity, but by the quality of love, the physical being an outward expression of interior devotion.  That’s a lesson a lot of people in our generations have learned the hard way.  I’ve know plenty of folks, over the years, who’ve been through no shortage of lovers, who’d trade places with you in a flash.   My advice:  Be good to your husband and count your blessings.    
 I’ll make this suggestion:  Go home, take out your wedding pictures, and remember what it was that made you want to commit to this guy in the first place.   Chances are, it’s still there, somewhere, inside both of you.  
 And on the chance you’re thinking of a fling with another man, if that’s what this about, spend 99 cents and download the cautionary tale by the Amazing Rhythm Aces: “Third rate romance/low-rent rendevouz.”  I’d hate to see you go there.  Let’s move on…

Want to talk about the Prozac?  You say you’re depressed that you’re on anti-depressants? 
 
 
 Let me share my story.  When I was about your age, I started having spells where I’d black out.   It’s surely no coincidence that the first of these happened in a church office, in the mid-80s, trying to learn how to use one of these new-fangled personal computers. 
I might add that I was not initially enthusiastic about getting into computers.   It was good enough for me to pound out my sermons on a typewriter and literally cut and paste the manuscript.  You say you can’t imagine?  Well, believe me, I couldn’t have imagined then that in 2010 I’d be carrying a computer with me.  Anyway…. Back to the ‘80s…
I’d had a young couple say they’d serve as church treasurers if I’d allow them to buy the church a computer and learn to use it myself.  The thing terrified me, but good church treasurers are hard to come by, and I was determined to try.  
 Anyway, I was sitting in front of the screen one day, pecking away at the keyboard, and started getting dizzy.  Next thing I knew, I’d fallen out the chair, onto the floor.   To make a long story short, I wound up getting referred to a psychiatrist who wanted to put me on anti-depressants.  NoNoNo.  Don’t want to do that.  No pharmaceutical lobotomy for moi.  But the doctor explained this was a medical condition. 
She compared the human brain to one of these old-fashioned telephone systems (way before your time, Debbie) where the operator is managing all these wires for incoming calls and if the incoming wire doesn’t get plugged into the correct outgoing jack, the conversations get crossed.  
The doctor talked about how our mental wiring can get frayed and that the stress of fast-changing times could accelerate the process.   Believe it or not, Debbie, there was a time when people talked about me as a “young man in a hurry”—maybe too much of a hurry for my own good.  Anyway, the doctor said there were medicines that could actually help repair the wiring, which is how I wound up on the kind of medication you’re on.
 
Which is to say, regardless of what anybody tells you, there’s no disgrace about being on anti-depressants, so long as you’re under a doctor’s care and don’t go around self-prescribing.   And for heaven sakes, don’t go OFF the medicine without talking to a doctor first.  
And at a more fundamental level, don’t be depressed about being depressed.  Depression can be a vicious cycle, and I congratulate you for taking it seriously.   And if it feels worse in this kind of weather, believe me you’re not alone.  Are you getting some exercise?  That helps a lot. 

You didn’t realize counselors talked so much?  Most don’t.  But if you wanted someone who listens, you should have gone to Nancy.  I’ve thought it would be neat to have one of these radio counseling shows where people call in with their problems, the hosts listens for a whole fifteen seconds, and then talks until the next commercial about what the caller ought to do to make life peachy keen….

TYLER: SUMMER OF ’69 CHORDS, TYLER SINGS THE LYRIC, STOP MUSIC WHEN INDICATED

 So let’s talk about 1985 then.  Still preoccupied with it, huh? 
I can empathize with that. 
When I was about your age, Debbie, there was a song out by a guy named Bryan Adams.  Never heard of him?  He was big for a while.  His big hit was The Summer Of ’69, about a fellow who’d been in a 60’s-era garage band.  I was in one of those myself.  The Neptunes were legends in a three-county area.  I can’t hear this lyric without getting chills:  

TYLER:  Got my first real six-string
Bought it at the five-and-dime
Played it till my fingers bled
It was the Summer of ‘69

And this was the chorus: 

Yeah, when I look back now
that summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice, yeah, I’d always want to be there. 
Those were the best days of my life.
 

 That’s one of my all-time favorite songs, Debbie, great guitar riff; the guy’s experience sounds a lot like mine.  But I hear the chorus and say Get Thee Behind Me Satan.  (STOP MUSIC)
I’ve known so many people over the years, Debbie, who were practically paralyzed by the experiences of who they used to be, in high school and their teenage years, on into college.

Some were bitter about the experience and years later carried the bitterness with them, like unhealed acne.   I’ve seen some turn that into a life motif of revenge, as in:  I’ll show them.  

For others, those really were the best days of their lives.   I’ve been rereading THE GREAT GATSBY.  Got it right here.  There’s a wonderful line, Fitzgerald writing of a middle-aged fellow who’d been a football star in college:  he was “one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax.” 

And then there are people like you, Debbie (I known lots of them), who compare who they are with who they thought they were going to be, and the disappointment becomes a preoccupation.  

Allow me another of my theories.  There are societal factors that reinforce what I’ve come to think of as perpetual adolescence.  This is a culture that has a lot invested in keeping people from growing up.   Buy our product and you won’t look your age!   And if there’s something wrong with looking your age, maybe there’s something wrong with being your age.  
No wonder people get preoccupied with looking back, moaning that verse, Those were the best days of my life.

To which I have this to say, Debbie:  Grow up.

There are scriptures that apply.  Hope you’re okay with me sharing some scripture.  That’s what I do.  How about Ecclesiastes, chapter 7:  “Better is the end of a thing than its beginning…. Do not say, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”  Wisdom looks forward, not backward, Debbie.
 

 Of course, there’s Lot’s wife.  You remember her?  Book of Genesis.  The angel told Lot to take his family and leave the city of Sodom, pronto.   Don’t look back.  Underlined it, with exclamation points:  DON’T LOOK BACK!   If she was here, I ask Mrs. Lot:  What part of DON’T LOOK BACK didn’t you understand? Alas, she looked back and turned into a pillar of salt.  Poof.  I see lots of lives going Poof right in front of my eyes, so many of them having focused their attention on what was behind them, rather than what was ahead—no wonder they hit a wall!--and I don’t want that for you, Debbie.  I don’t want that for anybody.

 Then there’s Jesus saying to people who were ready to follow him, but said they had tidy up things from their past first:  Forget that, let the dead bury the dead.   What’s past is past.  Heard somebody use a phrase I liked, that could apply to a multitude of situations, including unresolved guilt and regret, “It’s like the Sopranos (the television show?):  It’s over.”

And a wonderful passage in Hebrews, talking about pioneers of the faith, people like Abraham and Sarah, who left the only land they’d ever known, on the promise God had chosen a better place for them.  Hebrews notes that if these people had stayed where they were, or had their minds on where they’d been, they would have never gotten where God wanted them to be.   As it was, these pioneers of the faith knew only one direction, Debbie:  FORWARD!
 And that’s the direction I want for you:  FORWARD!

 The old Wesleyans (as in John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement) talked about Holiness of Heart and Life.  Life is meant to be lived in forward gear, striving each day to grow more perfect in love for God and one another.  
A song before your time included this lyric, “I believe in yesterday.”  I invite you, Debbie, to believe in tomorrow!

 I got to thinking about some of those people in your song, from the era you wanted to “bring back.”
 

 I noticed, for instance, you wanted to shake your stuff on the hood of Whitesnake’s car?  Did you know the lead snake, David Coverdale, is as old as I am?  He might do better calling the band Graysnake.  The band has split up and reformed multiple times and is still touring with other heavy metal has-beens.  Coverdale still doing that thing with the microphone and his trousers.  You remember that?  Yuck.  That was obscene in 1985; it’s positively creepy for a man of this age. 

 Speaking of creepy.  How motley must some of those Motley Crew tattoos be by now?

 I guess you knew John Hughes, director of THE BREAKFAST CLUB, died last year.  Heart-attack.  He was 59 years old.  I’m 59.  I read somewhere, Hughes was called The Philosopher of Adolescence.  I wonder if he ever developed a philosophy of adulthood, at least for himself?   I hope so.  I guess the kids in the cast largely fall into the category of “Whatever happened to….?” 

This is interesting, Debbie.  Did you know that in 2004 Madonna converted to a mystic branch of Judaism and changed her name to Esther, which means star?  I’m not making that up.  She’s been through enough plastic surgery by now to bring a whole new meaning to the term “material girl.”

Eddie Van Halen has been in and out of rehab more often than his band’s been through lead singers.  He and Valerie broke up, of course, and now she’s doing commercial for weight loss products.  And you think YOU’RE disappointed as to how YOUR life turned out?

You wanted to get a hand of Duran Duran?  Those are the guys in dreadlocks who lip-synched their songs?  No?  That was Milli Vanilli?  I get them confused.  That’s right:  Duran Duran were the androgynous guys.  I don’t BEGIN to understand that attraction and if you’re still into Duran Duran, I may have underestimated the severity of your issues.  

In contrast, I think of others who have used time to good purpose.  Front and center:  U2.  Bono has become a good will ambassador to the world.  He is a strong Christian who invites people of goodwill everywhere to co-exist.  I like that a lot. 

But while Bono has evolved into a modern-era prophet, I have most identified with Springsteen’s journey.   1985 was the year of Born In The USA, the height of his celebrity.  He married a super-model, but that didn’t work out so well.  It was a rough stretch.  The E-Street band broke up.
Springsteen licked his wounds, then married Patti Scialfa, another singer from New Jersey.  Patti’s no super-model, but they’ve formed a remarkable life partnership.  The E-Street band reunited and is making terrific music.
What?  Is the drummer the guy on the Conan O’Brien show?  Yes.  That’s Max Weinberg.  You’re beginning to irritate me, Debbie.
Anyway, Springsteen’s newest album, released last year, is heavy on love songs, appropriate to his age and mine, lyrics like I’d want to write for Nancy:

With you I don’t hear the minutes ticking by
I don’t feel the hours as they fly
I don’t see the summer as it wanes
Just a subtle change of light upon your face 

I hear an appreciation there of the subtle changes that come with aging.   If we’ll go with God’s flow, Debbie, instead of against, there is much beauty to the process.   Here, let me punch up the song on I-Tunes….

When I count my blessings and you’re mine for always
We laugh beneath the covers
and count the wrinkles and the grays
Sing away, sing away, sing away, sing away
This is our kingdom of days….
 

Debbie, this can be your kingdom of days, the best days of your life, even a foretaste of the life of the world to come.  I believe that.  

What about the dreams you had?  Debbie, this is the nature of dreams.  We wake up….

Ah, gee, you’re crying…. 

Band goes into song….

 Bruce:   I didn’t mean to cause you any sorrow
                        I’m sorry that you’re dealing with such pain
        I hope I don’t across as judgmental
        I only want to tell you, Debbie, that our Savior reigns
 
 Nate:  Jesus reigns, Jesus reigns
                    Jesus reigns, Jesus reigns
   Jesus reigns, Jesus reigns
  
Bruce:        I only want to see you living in our Savior’s 
reign
    
Nate:         I know, I know, I know the times are changing
It’s time we all reach out for something new, that means you, too
You say you know it’s time to grow up, but you can’t seem to make up your mind
   I think you better turn to Jesus
   Let him guide you to the Savior’s reign
  
                            Jesus reigns, Jesus reigns
                    Jesus reigns, Jesus reigns
   Jesus reigns, Jesus reigns
  I only want to see you living in our Savior’s 
Reign

         BRD