The Times They are a-Changing

We’re sitting in retired bliss, windows open to catch the last warm breezes of fall, recliner footrests up, and  books in hand, when into the rustle of turning pages comes someone else’s music. Likely a cool young teenager sauntering down the sidewalk with a boombox, sharing his tastes with the neighborhood.

He gets closer. And it hits us at the same time. That’s Bob Dylan! That’s our music out there in the cool kid’s boombox, lyrics our generation sang to our parents when we were young and cool:

Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

Along with four-part harmony at church, this folk music with its simple words, sing-along vocal styles, and lyrical messages of peace, love, and social justice was the music of our youth.

After dates, Steve would drive me home in his 1967 Buick Special. He’d turn the radio dial to catch Peter, Paul, and Mary singing about hammering out justice. Or John Denver about leaving on a jet plane. Or the New Seekers about the world standing hand in hand.

Steve would reach for my hand, and we’d drive through Flint down Saginaw Street, wishing the evening would never end.

The cool kid on the sidewalk takes us back to those years, that long-ago time when we were building our identities, finding who we were. So no wonder the music from his boombox grabs us.

But this isn’t just nostalgia. In education, we call it the reminiscence bump. Adolescence and budding adulthood are times of rapid change, heightened hormones and emotion, and cognitive fitness—all ideal conditions for storing memory.

During this time, the books we read, the sports we play, and the movies we see stick with us. But especially the music we hear. Music prompts the brain to release dopamine and oxytocin—the same chemicals that are triggered when eating chocolate cake or taking a nap or driving down Saginaw Street with a boyfriend.

Put hormones and music together, and you’ve got something to remember.

The other week, Steve made his first playlist ever—Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, the

New Seekers, the Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel, and Peter, Paul, and Mary.

On the way to visit grandkids in college this last weekend, we drove back to Michigan. And going up Route 68, we listened again to Dylan’s “The Times They are a-Changin’.” And Steve reached over to take my hand.

I don’t know what he was thinking, but here’s what I was hoping—that, “though our old road was rapidly agin’,” we’d still be able to  “lend a hand” to our college grandkids.