[Carrie] Sweet Memories

I’m a sucker for Starburst. Love ‘em. But they hurt my teeth if I eat too many. And how can you not eat too many Starburst?

They take me back, though, to when I was a kid, dancing around my bedroom with that sweet cherry paste popping in my mouth.

Listening to the Third Coast Audio festival to write my billboard, I was also taken back to that time when I was a kid. Bohemian Rhapsody. You know, the Queen song. Queen. Freddy Mercury. Someone on the documentary that ran on the Third Coast fest asserts that the band was never cool. I disagree. I vividly remember my high school football team verily shouting, “We are the champions…of the world,” beer sloshing out of the kegs that were flowing in the back of the red, Chevy pickup, as Freddy and company blared on the speakers that were set on top of the cab.

And I thought, do these testosterone-laden jocks really know this band? I mean, it’s called “Queen.” And it’s not named after Elizabeth II.

And perhaps that’s why the Starbursts popped into my head. Perhaps it was just my week to indulge in nostalgia, immerse myself in the memories that I now call my youth.

Or perhaps it was just that my mouth was dry because I was nervous about recording for Round 2.

But when I got to my friend’s studio, I found I was way early. And after practicing some 2-minute drills in my car, and reading my billboard to my dashboard, I got out and decided to stop in the little corner convenience store of the kind that still dot Chicago neighborhoods—and probably have in some form since the 1940s. I wanted Starburst. I deserved some. Teeth be damned.

And maybe it was a coincidence, but I took it as an omen. Because when I walked into that little store, with the fans whirring, and the display cases that were bought at least 30 years ago (and haven’t been moved since), what was coming out of the speakers in the ceiling? You got it: Bohemian Rhapsody.

All the nervousness drained out of me. I didn’t even need the Starburst anymore.

But I did eat them on the way home, just the same.

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