If You're Nice About It, Call Me Allison

There are distinct memories we carry from our childhood years. Some are real but most are a knitted assortment of fractured recollection, sensory encounter, flattened context, life experience, and shifting perspective. What we are remembering is not what actually happened, it's how we remember it from the last time we thought about it. And if you live long, you create a train of thought where jangled memory defines present reality. All that to say, I have many distinct memories about driving home in the back of my mom's car after visiting my grandparents. The son is setting and I, for reasons that are unclear to me, am feeling maudlin. My mom didn't get to experience much of her young adulthood before I was born, so unlike most of her contemporaries that favored Madonna, White Snake, and other 80s music, she would always have on alt stuff from the 90s, perhaps to try and enjoy the moment. And not Nirvana or Pearl Jam, but the kind of acceptable pop stardom for parents. Alan...