Yesterday

One day last week, I was sweating on the elliptical machine at the health club when I saw an old guy with a Beatles shirt coming up to join me. My first impression was , "What is that old guy doing with a Beatles Shirt?" Then, smiling to myself, I realized that he was probably my age. The Beatles. I remember exactly when I first heard of them. It was 1964 and I was returning one Sunday evening to my dorm at UT . The normally empty lobby was packed. Everyone was looking at the TV and I was sure someone else had been shot. “What happened?” I asked? About twenty guy chimed in “The Beatles are coming on!!” Beatles?? Did we need an exterminator? Someone commented that I must have come out from under a rock. The rest is history. Had that group arrived ten years earlier or later, they would have probably not been much more than a footnote. As it is, you would be hard pressed to find anyone from that era who didn’t have a Beatles song that fit something in their lives. I was in boot camp when “Yesterday” was on the top ten: “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, Now it looks as those their here to stay” That summed up perfectly my first days in the military. I dismounted the elliptical machine and stopped to complimented the old man with the Beatles shirt. His smile told me that we shared a common past . For just a moment, he didn’t look old at all. I’ll have to get me one of those.