#2. Disco

There are some things no one wants to admit he did. Like pulling the fire alarm in kindergarten because you wanted to see what happens. Or like pulling the fire alarm in third grade because you wanted to get out of a test. Or like pulling the fire alarm in prison so as to make your escape. But I digress.

I was only following the instructions. Geez.

Go ask anyone who was alive in 1976 if he or she listened to disco, and unless that person is Anni-Frid, Bjorn, Benny, or Agnetha (more on ABBA later), he'll probably say no. And unless that person is deaf, dumb, Canadian, or in their 80s, he is lying. If that person is you, stop wasting your time. I know your secret.

You listened to disco. You thought disco was awesome. You knew the name of the local discotheque where you could go, wear shiny clothing and a jewfro, and dance until it was 2:37 in the morning when you realized that the chick you were dancing with was actually a man and that you'd never get laid if you kept listening to disco.

You

Then, like everyone else in America, you crowded Comiskey Park, burned and trashed every Village People record you had bought (except for the one with YMCA, but you won't admit that either), then when you ran out of records, you burned the playing field and felt good about yourself, even though it forced your beloved White Sox to forfeit the second game of the double header. And until today, you never admitted it to anyone.

But I've always been onto you, and now I've exposed you, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Anyway, back to ABBA.

Still, you've liked ABBA. You always have. You have “Dancing Queen” on your iPod, played it at your wedding, did karaoke to it at your junior year roommate's bachelor party in 1993 (the first time he got married, of course), and you made a mix tape for your son just last fall and “accidentally” threw it on out of hope that he'd like the song enough to play it at his wedding, which he will, but only because he's gay.

Yet, you've separated yourself from the rest of your ABBA, from “Waterloo” and “Take A Chance On Me” and from the entire Arrival album, the same one you played so much when it came out in the fall of 1976 that the vinyl wore out and you had to get your aunt to buy it for you again that Christmas. And I applaud you for that. You have accepted that disco died; you even avoided its brief resurgence in the late 1990s, because you knew that it was gone. You've moved on, even though it pains you.

Let's hope it stays that way.