Peter Cetera "The Glory Of Love"

I remember thinking: "Who the hell ARE these people?"

I mean, they were the kids I had gone to school with for 12-plus years, for crying out loud. High school, middle school (with a Catholic school detour), elementary school, nursery school . . . a few even as far back as pre-school playgroup.

And here we were on the verge of graduation about to go our separate ways, and we were asked to vote on our class favorites.*

Peter Cetera?

Somehow Peter Cetera was voted as the favorite male vocalist of The Class of 1987?

Who the hell ARE these people that would vote for Peter Cetera? Certainly not anybody I knew.

The choice was just so far from my frame of reference (and from that of my close friends), that I didn't feel any sentimentality about leaving high school, about leaving town, about leaving these people who I clearly knew not at all, and frankly, had no interest in knowing.


You can't get an 18-year-old to believe such a thing, but it's true, things change. People change. You change.

How could you get an 18-year-old to believe such a thing? That someday, more people than you think would wind up with interesting, fascinating lives and stories?

Hell, I don't know that I would believe it in my 40s, were it not for Facebook.

Yeah, you can knock Facebook for being a huge time-suck, but I have to say, it has been extremely rewarding to peek in on the lives of people from high school. People I maybe knew pretty well but lost touch with. Or people I hardly knew at all.

It's been rewarding to meet-again-for-the-first-time these interesting people, with jobs and ideas and tastes and humor that a pretty limited 18-year-old me would have never given them credit for.

Starting Monday, Tanya Primo-Jones will be the guest blogger.

We went to Newburyport High School together for 4 years, but I can't say I knew her well then. She always seemed nice enough . . .

But who would have predicted (perhaps least of all, her!) that the nice kid with the locker down the hall is now an entrepreneur, a motivational speaker, an active-wear designer, a blogger, a surfer and a Mom of 3 boys?

Working for mvyradio for all these years, I sure do appreciate an independent spirit and a positive message, so I'm happy to give Tanya the reins of the blog for this week. She's going to write about 5 inspiring songs that share the spirit of her ventures, what she calls The Primo Spirit.

And no, she does not play any Peter Cetera.



* Here are some other Newburyport High School Class of 1987 "Favorites." Thanks to Stephanie George Minister, who dug out her yearbook to send me this list.

Favorite Female Vocalist - Whitney Houston
Favorite Male Vocalist - Peter Cetera
Favorite Comedian - Eddie Murphy
Favorite Song - Stairway to Heaven
Favorite Group - Led Zeppelin & ACDC
Favorite Movie - Top Gun
Favorite TV Show - Moonlighting