Sure, she was beautiful. And she was so much fun to be with. But as Sweetest Day approached way back a quarter of a century ago, at a time before Kim and I were married, the biggest question of all time had yet to be answered, and I had to find out.
Kim could be-bop with “Love Shack” and “Mony
Mony,” but did she know how to “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.?”
Could she sing the chorus to “Jack and
Diane”? Did she know that “Small Town” might be the greatest song ever written
in the history of mankind?
Could she appreciate the music of John Mellencamp the way I did?
On the Friday before Sweetest Day in
1991, I found out.
While driving back to my office after a
full morning in the court, I called Kim from my car phone (remember those?),
“Babe, I need you to get a sitter for Adam tonight,” I said. “I heard on the
radio that John Mellencamp is going to play a special promotional concert on
the back porch at Caddy’s. The place holds only 300. The last time he was in
Cincinnati he sold out the Coliseum.”
This was like being invited to have a
beer with Babe Ruth. We had to be there.
Like a trooper, Kim quickly found
someone to watch her 4-year-old little boy. Perhaps she knew deep down this was
the true test of our relationship, right up there with never planning a social
engagement while the Bengals are playing (let me tell you, I am a very deep and
complex individual).
We left early, cranking up the music on
my car’s cassette player along the way (cassettes were hip in those days,
people; don’t look at me like I was sending smoke signals). Kim recognized
“Hurt So Good” and “Check It Out,” and she even mouthed the words to “Lonely
Old Night.”
She was becoming even more beautiful by
the minute. But still I wondered. Could she keep this up for the rest of the
night? What if she got bored, the way I get after 35 minutes at the mall?
Oh, wait. I wasn’t supposed to say
that.
Only time would tell.
…
I REMEMBER DRIVING to a Mellencamp
concert in Indiana with Mark Kennard and Jeff Gorsuch right around this same
time period, and I think Tom Benjamin was there, too. After a lengthy debate
over something like who was the greater superhero, Superman or Batman (like me,
my friends are also very deep and complicated), someone asked me why I liked
John Mellencamp’s music so much.
I said I wasn’t sure, but somewhere
deep down inside me his music resonated with my soul. He sang about real
people, in situations I could relate to.
“And there’s something else.”
“What’s
that?”
“John Mellencamp is kind of my alter
ego. He doesn’t care for one second whether you like him or not. He’s just
going to be himself. I need to be like that a little more often.”
There was a moment of silence. Then one
of the ya-hoos said, “Kind of like the Green Hornet. Now there’s a Superhero
for you…”
…
KIM PASSED THE TEST at 10:43 that
evening. Mellencamp had played for almost two hours, and I was looking for an
indication that the boredom had arrived and we needed to make an early exit.
He started playing “Cherry Bomb,” which
if you ask me is an anthem for every generation. It’s about the innocence of
youth and the benefits of growing older. It’s about the beauty of life. I was
hoping Kim was okay for us to stay ‘till the end.
Kim wasn’t about to leave; instead, she
was ready to dance.
“That’s when a sport was a sport/
And groovin’ was groovin’/
Dancing meant everything/
We were young and we were improving/
Laughing, laughing with our friends/
Holding hands meant something, baby/
Outside the club Cherry Bomb/
I hearts were really pumping/
I say yeah; I say yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Those final words hit me hard because,
as happens all the time with me, I felt I was getting this heavenly message
through the words of a song. If I needed any assurance that Kim was the girl
for me to marry, I could hear all of Mellencamp Nation telling me my answer.
We all sang it together: Yeah, yeah; I
say yeah, yeah, yeah.
Happy Sweetest Day, Kim.