Doesn't karma have a funky sense of humor?

L: Mom, come listen to this! Don't you love this new song?
M: (listening) Um...yeah. That's "I Need a Hero."
L: How do you already know that?
M: It's been around for about...(scared, choking expression)...23 years.

Apparently the generations have aligned so that L has discovered the music of Footloose at almost exactly the same age I did.

(Note: I tortured my poor family with the Footloose soundtrack. I brought it on our family vacation to Mexico and they humored me, allowing me to play it on repeat the whole way down. And back. I think there might have been some singing along at full voice.)

The Lion King was wrong: the "circle of life" isn't just about how we take up the mantle left to us by our previous generations. It's how our children haunt us with the musical tastes of our youth, remaking and remixing and scoring commercials (The Cure's 'Pictures of You' for Kodak? B52's Rock Lobster for Kmart? Psychedelic Furs' Pretty in Pink for Cingular?) with our treasured classics until they recode their meaning to us. But my generation did it to our parents, our kids do it to us, the process keeps unwinding. In the circle...(everybody sing along)...the circle of life.