Oh you're bound to look like a monkey when you're old

In Nashville, loopy from fatigue, hunger, and the desire not to be standing on a random street corner waiting for a cab to bring us to Mad Hatter where we could finally finally eat (and, heavens, drink), Eric, Erfert, and I started singing camp songs. The fact that we were able to dredge these up with little to no effort speaks to the odd phenomenon of the mind holding fast to things that probably don't have much use in the wider world. Why is it that I can remember clear as day the lyrics to any song ever to hit the Top 40 at any point in the 80s but cannot easily fathom, say, basic European geography is something of a disappointment.

But maybe my brain's desire to squirrel away camp songs stems from the fact that it associates them with years in which I actually had proper summer vacations (with proper summer weather to match) and got to devote my energies to tasks like keeping my perms as curly as possible and mastering the culinary intricacies of s'mores rather than balancing my checkbook and dealing with the various stresses of the workaday world.

Longing for a return to one's childhood summers is probably exceedingly trite, I admit, but sometimes what's trite is also what's undeniably true.