Ask the Little Bald Bastard

L.A. waist wit' an Oakland booty...
  I went to a cast party on Saturday night. It had been an extremely long day, without much sleep the night before, and Amy and I were really going to just put in an appearance. Anyway, after all of the usual self-congratulatory stuff was over, Amy was catching up with some friends, and I ended up sitting on the couch next to my friend Angie.
  Angie and I worked together in The God of All Things, a performance piece that Amy wrote and directed for a class. I was cast as a middle-aged diplomat, and Angie played my pre-adolescent daughter, quite convincingly, I might add. Her role in the show we were cast-party-crashing was considerably more mature, and she tackled that with equal aplomb. Still, Angie is rather youthful in appearance, even younger than her actual 19 years. I still feel strangely paternal toward her, and I was vaguely proud as we discussed her lack of interest in drinking and her progress in school. Then, things got a little strange.
  As at most theater parties I've attended, the music was extremely eclectic. Although, bonus, no showtunes. Eventually, that classic of my misspent youth, "Baby Got Back," came on. I feel my age when I hear it lately, because it came out as I was firing my boosters and leaving the orbit of high school. Despite its ubiquity as a dance party staple, I identify it with a very specific time in my life, a time during which most of current social group, including my girlfriend, were in middle school. But that's not the strange part.
  Angie knew all the words. This song came out when she was in third grade, and she could sing along with every syllable. She could even make this sort of eerily accurate "wheep" sound and sing along with the record scratches.
  I know I'm probably overreacting, but there's an ironic overtone to the fact that she and I have this in common. I owned... hell, if I look hard enough I probably still own the song on a cassette single. Angie has never even seen a cassette single. To her credit, she didn't laugh at me when I asked her, but still. Of all the things we could have in common, it's Sir Mix-A-Lot that bridges our particular generation gap.
  When I am old and grey (or gray) and so riddled with Alzheimer's that I ask the nurse my middle name after a 20-minute nap, I will still remember listening to Angie proclaim that her anaconda didn't want none unless you got buns hon, and thinking that somewhere in our unlikely musical commonality was the key to solving the riddle of why people suck at getting along with other people. If only I could figure out how to get that message to the world, maybe we could all bond over amusingly cheesy hip-hop. Until then, it'll be our little secret, Angie.