'80s Flashback Memory: "Let's Hear It for the Boy"

Come on back with me, to a time when you got home from school and did nothing but watch cartoons or bad TV sitcoms until dinnertime on a console set that still looked a little fuzzy because your parents hadn't gotten around to getting cable yet. You know what I'm talking about, those days when you had maybe three choices for what to watch while you ate your Little Debbie snack cake.

If you can identify with those circumstances, maybe you'll see things you recognize here as well. During my satellite radio meanderings this week I ran across Deniece Williams' 1984 hit "Let's Hear It for the Boy", a standout on the Footloose soundtrack. But the funny thing is what the song made me think of. An image came flooding back to me of Sam, the cute brunette daughter with braces from Gimme a Break, bounding down the stairs singing this same song, apparently giddy over a burgeoning relationship with some jock (played, I believe, by Billy Zabka, the blonde guy who was Daniel-San's main rival in The Karate Kid). I remember Nell was pretty perturbed with Sam for being so typically teenage while she had to take care of that house.

So why is this worth mentioning, you may ask. I guess I'm fascinated and gratified by how completely music and its memory associations can stick with us despite the many experiences and scraps of knowledge that crowd our hearts and minds. I'm continuously impressed by music's power to make us feel, even when it's mundane, fleeting or otherwise forgettable.