Do you have any idea how bizarre it is to remember almost every popular song from the '60s and '70s?

You think I'm kidding? I wish I were. I was in the fitness center at our Club Peachtree this afternoon, getting ready to hop on the treadmill for a fast 66 minutes. The sound system in the building, which has XM Radio, was tuned to the '70s channel.

<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BlobServer.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-798" title="BlobServer" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BlobServer.jpg" alt="" width="138" height="50" /></a>I don't remember what the song was, but it was some fairly obscure hit with a lengthy musical intro before the lyrics started. I knew right away what it was. And except for the disco era -- when I tuned out a lot of what was passing for popular music -- I'm the same way with almost everything that was much of a hit during my teens and twenties.

It appalls me that I can sing along with "Billy Don't Be a Hero" or "The Night Chicago Died," two truly execrable songs, but I find it almost impossible to learn a foreign language. Maybe it's because the hard drive in my memory is full of all this crap that can't be deleted.

<em>"Here's a story, of a lovely lady ..."</em>

I didn't even <em>watch</em> "The Brady Bunch" and I know the lyrics to that song.

It could be worse. When I was 22 or 23 and used to go drinking at the old GWU Campus Club with friends, I could not only name the songs and the groups who performed them, if the group was at all significant, I could name all the members and the instruments they played.

I wasn't always so full of useless trivia. Or maybe I was. When I was 14, I remember memorizing the names of every one of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate. I also remember going to the presidential inauguration in 1965 (LBJ) and getting a dozen or two state governors to autograph a copy of that day's <em>Washington Post</em>. That newspaper might possibly be buried somewhere in my mother's house. I don't remember who the governors were, but I know none of them turned out to do much more than be state governors.

That's not so bad.

I never turned out to be much more than a weird kid with a wacky memory.