Reunited ...

... and it feels so gooooood ...

The seventies station to which I often listen while driving around town alone played that Peaches & Herb song today. (Fun fact: There have been five different Peaches, while Herb has remained constant. The third Peaches, Linda Greene, is the one featured on the group's biggest hits, "Reunited" and "Shake Your Groove Thing.") I was pulling out of a parking lot at the time, and as always happens when I hear that intro, I remembered a church trip to Six Flags Over Georgia when I was fourteen years old.

I wonder if the best friend who belted out the song with me on that bus remembers the moment like I do. We were inseparable for four years of elementary school. She lived at the bottom of the hill; I lived at the top. On summer days I'd follow the narrow trail through the undergrowth that separated her street from time and visit the little house where she lived with her mother. We'd listen to the music and watch the television shows that weren't entirely welcome at my house. Her life as the only child of a single mother was surely far from perfect, but from my privileged yet culturally restricted standpoint, her home was a paradise.

Although we went to different high schools, we spent time together at church. Something about our senses of humor clicked, and side by side we nourished mutual obsessions with the Beatles and the original cast of Saturday Night Live. That 1979 early morning pulling out of the church parking lot with the rest of the youth group, when "Reunited" came on the radio, it was like there was no one in the world but us. We put our arms around each other's shoulders and sang our hearts out.

This week in Popless Noel is writing about "Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place)," which is "our song"; it was playing when Noel proposed in 1995. Most of us probably have songs like that in our lives. But I'm intrigued by the songs that define moments meaningful to us and possibly no one else. What songs never fail to bring back memories for you?