Bought Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run cd the other day. I’ve wanted it for the longest time. Not sure why I kept denying myself. Wow! The opening notes to Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out starts, Bruce on the guitar and Clarence Clemons having a go at it on the sax, and my feet and hips start to move and I’m seventeen again and back at UGA’s Brumby Hall getting Bruced.8)

When I was in high school I had car posters on my bedroom walls and a Springsteen poster on my door. Bobby “Gross” Sherman? David “Ick” Cassidy? Donnie “Ack” Osmond? Peter “Pretty” Frampton? BLECH. No, thanks. Give me Springsteen.

My freshman year in college, my roomie was a Jersey girl transplant. Springsteen was about the only thing we had in common, but it was enough. (y) We’d drag back to the dorm at the end of the day, me having finished with the horrid geography class (my only freaking “C” in my entire life and the professor assured me it was a “rock-bottom C” at that. Humph. A’s in Honors Statistics, Honors Classical Literature, and Honors Accounting but a stinking C in miserable Geography–not that I’m still angsting over it 20-some years later:() and Ann would crank Bruce on the record player (yes, back in the ancient days of vinyl). Loud. Nothing like a little “Bad Scooter searching for his groove” to dispel geography angst (well, except maybe a pitcher of beer at O’Malley’s). We called it “getting Bruced.”

So, first quarter ended and Ann and I went home for Christmas break. I was all kinds of homesick and ready to see my Mama again, but by mid-December I was ready to head back to school. Apparently my roomie was as well. I got a Christmas card from her and it had a note that went something along the lines of, “Miss you. Mom’s driving me crazy. Can’t wait to get back and we can get Bruced.”

Apparently my mother read the card which I’d left laying around. My first clue was when she pitched a wall-eyed fit followed by a case of the Southern lady vapors. “Jen-ni-fur, you’re doing drugs at school, aren’t you? I knew it. My baby’s doing drugs.”

I was totally at a loss. “What in the name of Jesus are you talking about?” That didn’t exactly go over big given my mother’s devout Southern Baptist standing.

“I read that card. Ya’ll are doing drugs. I saw what she said about getting Bruced. That’s something to do with that mary-wanna, isn’t it?”

I adore my mother. At that point we had duo hysteria going on. Her hysterical with the my-daughter-has-become-a-college-druggie variety (hey, at least I knew she loved me and cared what I was doing) and me with the oh-my-God-this-is-too-funny version. We cleared it up. Oddly, she’s never found that remotely amusing.

So, twenty-something years later, I’m not sure where to take this next scene…I know just the cure. I’m cranking the cd player to the invitation to “just wrap your legs ’round these velvet rims and strap your hands across my engines.”

Gotta run…I’m getting Bruced.:x