I am listening to Holaback Girl by Gwen Stefani. I heard it first at the gym since, for the most part, I listen to music from my teens. Not that I don’t keep up, I do. It’s a lot easier for baby boomers, since our music keeps cropping up, either as remakes or samples. My dad never had that luxury of turning on a pop-music station knowing that at some point, a tune from his childhood would flow from the speakers. In the 70s, my teens, no one was borrowing from Artie Shaw or Frank Sinatra. That was then, and it remained then.

As I listen to Holaback Girl, with its infectious beat and nonsensical lyrics, I am back at Marineworld, an amusement park in Northern California. Bryson has paused briefly in front of a basketball toss game on the midway. Or was it the football throw, or the baseball toss? I am not sure. But I am looking across the midway, next to the squirt-gun game (which we had already played, winning a stuffed monkey that Bryson gave to a little girl passing by, notching another smile – for him, for me, for a little girl we’d never see again who may or may not remember that time a boy just walked up and gave it to her).

It has been a hectic day, the park choked with high school students on an end-of-the-school-year field trip. Teens have been everywhere, in lins, in stores, in restaurants. Screaming. Cussing. Jumping over rails in line.

I am looking across the midway as Holaback Girl comes over the loudspeakers. I am familiar with it just enough to mouth the chorus, bobbing my head. Then my gaze settles on a girl, perhaps 15 or 16. Latina. Tank top and blue shorts. Black hair past her shoulders, clutching a stuffed animal. She is singing along, her hips swaying, stepping side to side in time with the beat. She dips one shoulder, does a slow shimmy as the other shoulder dips. Each shoulder then rises, one at a time, and she repeats the move. It is simple, yet with an elegance and grace that is surprising, that demands people to stop and watch. But no one does, except the young girl with her. She looks much like the teen, but is no more than 8. She is riveted to the performance in front of her, tries to copy it, remains about 1 ½-steps behind, enough out of time with the music to be jarring if it were not for her wide smile. She is laughing as (her sister?) dances and sings. The song continues, her dance is seductive.

That is all I remember. I am sure at some point that either Bryson said something to bring me out of the moment, or the crowd converged, or the song merely ended. It was a moment designed to occupy a single memory, a tic on the clock. And it firmly attached itself to Holaback Girl, the image coming back each time I hear that song, no matter where I am.

I had many such songs when I was younger, though my aging mind refuses to cooperate and keep them where they belong. They are gone, or perhaps a sliver might return when that song returns. Either that or the memory and song are disassociated. Through much of my 20s and 30s, there was a song that took me back to my old room, where I curled up in a beanbag chair, a ragged paperback resting on my knees. I cannot forget the book. The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty. But I cannot hear that song anymore. I have no idea why the two had been linked. Was it my favorite song on an album I had listened to exclusively while reading? Had I reached a particularly compelling passage? I don’t know. And I miss that connection.

Other song-memories have lost their clarity. I remember working up the nerve to ask a girl to dance at a dorm party during my freshman year in college. I worked up the nerve because I knew the song well, That’s the Way of the World by Earth Wind and Fire. Every word, every beat was familiar. Yes, I could slow dance to that with confidence. But I was used to the album version. The DJ played the radio edit. Halfway through there was a stutter and I was hopelessly lost. It also was the song played at my wedding for the first dance with my new bride, but the tune already had its link. Though details aren’t as clear, I remember that dorm-room disaster dance more than the first dance. It’s not like you can choose.

You hear of other people talking about their song, of a melody that brings them back to a special moment. Music’s magic has not been the same for me. It brings back moments, whether they are magic or not. I’ve learned that the “special” part of it isn’t so important. Just sparking a particular memory is enough, like the girl who in the middle of her peers showed a lack of self-consciousness not characteristic of her age group. She danced for no one but herself.

Maybe it was a special moment after all.