Dancing in the Dark

I remember the first time I heard Bruce Springsteen. It was October of 1980, and I was in Clint something or other's room at Southwest Texas State University hanging out with the first floor guys. It was my second senior year (Don't ask!), and I was their R. A. I did whatever it took to relate to the freshman that year. I remember thinking they were so young. I was a wise twenty-one-year-old man with all the answers, if only they would listen.

I was walking down the hall and noticed the distinct aroma of marijuana coming from one of the rooms. Clint's room was the only one from which music and loud voices seemed to be coming. I knocked on his door and waited a minute or two as they did their stoned best to get rid of the evidence of their pot smoking crime. Finally, they opened the door, and I lied to them about my reason for knocking. I looked Clint right in the eye and said, "I like the music you were playing. Who is it?" Clint and his buddies totally forgot about the pot smoking and gave me hell for not knowing who "The Boss" was. They had just bought the album that day at that combination record store and laundromat that used to be a few blocks from campus.

I sat there in that room and listened to the whole album. I can't explain why, but I had a "Killing Me Softly" experience. (No I was not smoking their dope!) I felt like Bruce
Springsteen had looked into my soul and discovered all of my inner feelings and thoughts and put them on that album. I know that was kind of stupid since, at twenty-one, I hadn't experienced any of the things he sang about. There was just something there that was of the utmost importance to me at that moment in my life. After listening to the album, I said, "I don't want to smell any more pot coming out of your room," and left them with their mouths hanging open and "lay down your money and you play your part, everybody's got a hu-uh-uh-un-gry heart!" playing over and over in my head.

I became a Bruce Springsteen fanatic. I didn't have any money, but I did have a Texaco gas card. I told all the guys on my floor to let me know when they were going to fill up. I would put their gas on my credit card, take their cash, and run off to buy another Springsteen album. I bought them in the order that they had been released, starting with Greetings from Asbury Park. There were songs "about me" on each of them. On Asbury Park, the song "Spirit in the Night" was almost exactly the story of an experience I had at Canyon Lake one night after partying too hard at a club in San Marcos. "4th of July" from The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle said what I wanted to say to Lynda, the girl I thought I was madly in love with at the time, even though the song had nothing to do with my life. I had spent enough time in New Jersey to be familiar with the boardwalk. Maybe that was what helped me relate to it. I was getting ready to graduate and wanted Lynda to give up the party life and move on with me, even though I knew that wasn't in her plans. When Bruce sang "This boardwalk life for me's through... you ought to quit this scene too....Love me tonight, and I promise I'll love you forever," he said everything I wanted to say to her, but couldn't. On Darkness on the Edge of Town, the song "Racing in the Street" seemed to be telling me that it was time to just break out and do it, whatever it was. It was so obvious to me in the lines, "Tonight, tonight the highway's bright. Out of our way, mister, you best keep. 'Cause summer's here and the time is right for racin' in the street."

Well, I graduated from SWTSU in 1981 and moved to Waeldar, Texas to start my teaching career without Lynda. I spent a lot of time listening to my Springsteen albums in my lonely apartment. But, I have to admit that I didn't get Nebraska at all when it came out in 1982. There was absolutely nothing on that album that spoke to me. I started to think that my relationship with Bruce was over. I was growing away from him and experiencing life for myself. I didn't need to sit in my room listening to him tell about his life anymore. The connection was gone, and I couldn't see myself in his new music.

I stayed in Waelder for four years, convinced that I liked being there. I had a girlfriend whom I was ready to marry, until all of a sudden something snapped in my head when she told me she wanted to put a trailer next to her mother's house on the family ranch. I realized that we weren't going to have our own life at all. We were going to continue the life she was already living at home. The only difference was that she would be a married woman. All I was to her was an opportunity to slam a wedding ring on her finger. In fact, within months of our breaking up, she hooked some other sucker and planted him right there in that trailer.

Since I was a free man again, I started spending time on the weekends with my buddy Clay and his wife in Seguin. Clay and I had been in the dorm together and did everything in our power to relive those college days. I think I was just enough of an escape for him as he adjusted to married life, and spending time with him kept me from going crazy all by myself in Waelder, where life was starting to lose whatever appeal it had held for me.

It was during one of those weekends in Seguin when I bought Bruce's album Born in the USA. The magic was back. That album was just what I needed at the time. The song "Dancing in the Dark" was about me. It said everything that I had been feeling since ending my relationship with Caroline, the girl I thought I wanted to marry. Bruce sang, "Message keeps getting clearer, radios on, and I'm moving round my place. I check myself in the mirror. Wanna change my clothes my hair my face. Man I ain't getting nowhere just sitting in a dump like this. There's something happening somewhere. Baby, I just know that there is." I felt a vibration go through my body like an electric shock. I knew right then and there that I was done with Waelder.

The very next day, I told Lorenzo Miles, the principal of Waeldar High School, that I would not be coming back the next year. Everyone thought I was joking. Summer was a long way off, and they thought I would change my mind. What they didn't know was that I was already packing my stuff and taking things to San Antonio on the weekends. My mind was made up. I wanted a social life. I wanted to date a girl and fall in love. I wanted to get married. In fact, when Raquel Escobar, the principal of Loma Park Elementary School in Edgewood, asked my why I had come to San Antonio during my interview, I answered, "To get married." She actually thought I was already engaged. I didn't find the girl I wanted to marry until the next week when Rachel and I both attended new teacher orientation at the school. I'll tell that story some other time.

Without Bruce Springsteen, I wouldn't be the man I am today. I know it sounds ridiculous to say that, but it's true. It was "Dancing in the Dark" that got me to San Antonio. That move led to my meeting Rachel, getting married, buying the house we live in, and having two awesome sons. Had it not been for that song, I would probably be an old lush, still teaching in Waeldar and living in a ramshackle old house with my dog out in the middle of nowhere.

Have you had a chance to hear the album Working on a Dream that came out earlier this year? If not, you really should get it and listen to the song "My Lucky Day". Once again, Bruce seems to be singing what is in me. The song says what I feel about Rachel and my life with her. The refrain of the song goes, "Honey, you’re my lucky day. Baby, you’re my lucky day. Well I lost all the other bets I made. Honey, you’re my lucky day."