He Touched My Soul and He Still Makes Me Sing

Let me tell you the story of my first love, the man who touched my soul, who made me believe in the beauty, power and glory that could be my life…

And I look back now and smile a bit and wonder, because I was shy, awkward, geeky girl from a traditional suburban family, so why exactly did I identify with this…

In the day, we sweat it out on the streets

Of a runaway American dream

At night we ride through mansions of glory

In suicide machines

Sprung from cages on Highway 9

Chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected

And steppin’ out over the line

Oh, Memphis town rips the bones from your back

It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap

We gotta get out while we’re young

Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run

I discovered Bruce Springsteen’s The River and Born to Run when I was in High School. Born in the USA was the album released at the time, but I didn’t like that album much, so I kept looking and I found love.

Cars? Girls? Sweating it out on the streets? Death traps? Really? The constant pull of desire, convincing the girl to go to bed and getting her pregnant? The struggle for escape from a dead end life of factory jobs? Living on the backstreets? This spoke to me?

Well, yes.

None of his stories were mine literally. But he believed in something. I was going through the motions, getting good grades, doing what I was told and I didn’t believe in anything of my own. So what if he believed in cars and girls, it was something and maybe I could find my something too.

I put The River and Born to Run on my iPod this week. I still know all the words. I’ve been singing out loud in the car about chrome wheels, fuel injections and stepping out over the line. It is twenty-five years later and I have found my cars and girls. It is family and kids and home.

I have The Rising and Working on a Dream on my iPod too, the grown up version of Bruce Springsteen, and I have tickets to his show in April. It is fun, to have the grown up me wink and the shy, awkward High School girl in me, telling her she made it. Cuz tramps like us, baby we were born to run…