A very strange thing happened to me today.

I have been feeling a little bit down lately -- maybe it's a letdown from all the excitement of two weeks ago or maybe it's that birthday with a zero on the end coming up in three weeks. But for whatever reason, the light hasn't been shining quite as brightly in my world lately.

But this afternoon I had to take some papers to our financial advisor in Glendale, about six or seven miles away. So I got into my still new car, rolled the windows all the way down and popped the Beach Boys into the CD player.

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"Surfin' USA," which was came out when I was 13 or 14, was playing and I cranked it up louder than usual. It was a song I always loved growing up back East, with all the names of exotic beaches and far-away places that I wondered if I would ever visit. In 19-plus years, I've been to most of them, and in 1998 I actually saw Waiamea Bay on the west side of Kauai.

Barreling down the Glendale Freeway, cool winds rolling through the car and the Beach Boys blasting, all of a sudden I felt great.

All of a sudden I realized that no matter how long I live, no matter how old I get, there is a part of me that will never be touched by that.

There's a part of me that is going to be 17 forever.