When it comes time to apply sunscreen to my children in the summer, I’m prone to saying to the children, “Everybody’s free to wear sunscreen.”
That’s the title of a song by Baz Luhrmann from 1999.
I remember it because 1999 was a pivotal year in my life: I got married, moved from an apartment into a rental house that would be my first home with my beautiful wife, and I remember hearing that song on the radio in my office in that new house. The song charted and reached #10.
I remember when I heard the song that I recognized it; not because I’d seen it in an email forward that said Kurt Vonnegut had written it. No, my friends, I’d seen the original column by Mary Schmich. I’d gotten my first office desk job as a technical writer in the explosion of the Internet but before the rise of blogs, so I spent a lot of time in those days reading the Web sites of major city dailies, like the Chicago Tribune (along with the Chicago Sun-Times, Washington Post, New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, Washington Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and so on and so on). When I found I liked a columnist, like Mary Schmich (and Bob Greene and John Kass), I read their complete archives. So I was familiar with the column before the song came out.
But the song, too, sticks with me even now. You don’t hear it on the radio any more and probably won’t find it on any K-Tel collections of music from the 1990s (although I hear Grunge Rock is going to be huge–well, turn it up, man!).
The only place you’d hear it any more is the backwater corners of the Internet. Or, if you’re my children, almost every day, every summer.
