Back in the day - U2

On the radio this morning I heard someone say that this was the twentieth anniversary of U2 coming to town. If I had been thinking I would have realized that the show must have been a repeat. I was at the concert with my wife. We had just finished college and gotten married a few months earlier. It was in October, not April, as I seem to remember it. It was a pretty big event to travel south to the city for the concert. Twenty years ago I thought I new everything about everything. I thought I knew what I would do and where the future would take me. Twenty years later I’m watching my oldest son finish high school and will be seeing him off next fall to college. Twenty years later I’m still learning a lot. There’s always something new to learn about almost everything. One thing is constant, and that is change. The game of Hockey has changed, and so has Lacrosse. Twenty years from now it will have changed even more. The equipment has improved greatly, and we are seeing some very talented athletes take their skills to a new level. Some of the stickhandling in Lacrosse and Hockey just about pushes the limits of physics. The sticks and gloves are much better today, but some players are building on what they see other players do with their game. If anything, it’s the exposure that athletes have to other teams and players. If you want to know anything about what your favorite team or player is doing you can find a ton of information on the Internet. NHL and NLL games are shown on cable and the Internet making them easier to see than twenty years ago. Information is a powerful tool. Back in the day you had to go to the library to find out about anything that wasn’t part of the regular school curriculum. I put on some U2 to listen to while we were driving to my boy’s lacrosse games. I still like the music, and in fact I’ve even had it played before some of our hockey games. The warm up music was playing over the loud speaker as the teams made their way out on the field. It wasn’t U2, that’s for sure. Twenty years ago you needed a dime to make a call (maybe a quarter) Twenty years ago the music seemed like it was a huge part of everything. You played it on your cassette player or heard it on the radio. It was something that made you think. Now, I think it’s just something to scare the seagulls away.