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"That Thing You Do" was written 30-odd years after the heyday of the one-hit wonders of the 1960s, but the beauty of it is that it would have fit into 1962 almost perfectly.

It was such a different time, and it really was a more innocent time to be a teenager. I was 12 that summer, and I listened to my AM radio as if it were giving me the wisdom of the ages.

1962 was the second summer of the New Frontier, and it was still months till the Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember that "high-flying" WING/AM counted down the Top 40 every weekday, and I was glued to my radio from 2-5 every afternoon to hear it. We had moved to a different neighborhood that year, and I didn't really have any friends to play sports with. The summer of '62 was all about the tunes for me.

I remember how complicated I thought my life was in 1962. I had finally reached puberty, and I was madly in love with the beautiful Diane McClish, who had been my "girlfriend" briefly when I was 7, and the exotic Claudia Dunaway. Neither one of them wanted anything to do with me.

In fact, the only people I remember wanting to hang out with me were the two school bullies. One of them actually told me in October he was going to kill me, and the other used to sneak up on me and punch me. The irony was that even though he was bigger than I was, he always brought along one or two of his minions to hold my arms.

The first guy was scary and I took him very seriously. He was 6-foot-2 in the eighth grade and basically what we would call a mean redneck these days. My salvation was that I knew we were moving from Ohio to Virginia in January and I only had to stay out of his way for three months.

As you can see, I did.