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When Your Class Song Is So Wrong

What does a class song say of its outgoing seniors? I dunno about yours, but ours remains a sore subject among us more discerning survivors of West Albany High School's (Albany, Ore.) class of 1990.

First, we had Billy Joel's "These Are The Times To Remember," a soppy chestnut exhausted by the class of '87. One couldn't pass the gymnasium without hearing an assemblage of upperclassmen tucked within, swathed in their Mervyn's fineries, wetly, sweetly cooing, "These are the days to hold on to/'cause we won't, although we'll want to" while some anonymous harridan pecked away on piano.

Was this any way to announce the new frontier, the leaders of tomorrow - with the sentimental table scraps of three springs earlier?

Righteously enraged, we chucked a collective WTF at out student leaders, who responded with a swift teenaged sense of fairness and democracy: Fine. YOU pick something, since you're so AWESOME. Loosed, we attacked our write-in ballots. The Sundays' "Here's Where The Story Ends." Skid Row's "Youth Gone Wild." The more apocalyptic among us suggested R.E.M.'s "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." Even today my heart stirs with visions of deadly mortarboards plummeting to Earth.

The results were tallied, and one last election went down at an exclusive seniors-only assembly. Our final candidates were, big shock, "These Are The Times To Remember," Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire" (what the hell is it with Billy Joel?), and, uh, Joe Cocker's version of The Beatles' "With A Little Help From My Friends." The second was the most enthusiastically received - a catchy list of historic shame for which we accepted no responsibility.

But somehow, it was Cocker who emerged victorious. Eighteen years later, I'm still puzzled. I understood why it was listed; it was, after all, the opening theme to the popular dramedy The Wonder Years. And I liked the song just fine. But it said nothing about us. For whatever reason, West Albany's class of 1990 would be represented by a Beatles cover recorded in 1969, three years before most of us were even born. We were dished the usual folderol about cherished friendships and class unity and how the future was possible through harmonious teamwork. "But, dude," someone retorted, "the song's about getting baked. And class unity? Hell, I never wanna see most of you a**holes ever again."

Your class song is what?

So it was. My classmates and I marched to some scorched-yelp Woodstock sh*t and checked our watches while our vals and sals yammered cliché-addled homilies about the future. The only future most of us cared about at that moment involved the streets ending at the all-night party, where, coincidentally, I would win a CD copy of Joe Cocker's With A Little Help From My Friends (still got it too).

And I keep '69 Joe where he belongs - in prime spastic fettle on a long-gone summer's day, the class of '90 a faraway dream.

"Remember yesterday . . . walkin' hand in hand . . ."

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