I time traveled this morning. Well, I didn’t technically time travel, but I certainly took a journey into the past.

I was chauffering my dog Jasper to his favorite park when I made an unusual decision. I turned on the radio – not to hear news updates but to listen to music. I knew full well that this was a crap shoot. I’ve grown accustomed to listening to streaming services or to my favorite music on my phone. I knew the odds were against my hearing something I liked and, even if I did, that song would be sandwiched between commercials. But when I turned on the radio, not only was I surprised, but I was thrown back 40 years in time.

Kasey Kasem was announcing that the Police’s “Wrapped Around My Finger” had moved up four spots to number 19 on the charts.

Wait! What?

I quickly determined that the radio station was playing an American Top 40 episode from 1984. I sang along Madonna’s “Holiday” and and Billy Joel’s “An Innocent Man” with the feeling that, if I closed my eyes and opened them again, I’d be sitting on my teenage bed underneath a blue, yellow, and red Synchronicty poster.

Since I was driving and couldn’t close my eyes, I just basked in the wave of nostalgia that came over me as I connected each song with a snapshot in time: cruising in Kanawha City with the car windows down, a group of friend calling the local radio station again and again to request the same song, and feeling lucky to have great concert seats for the Police’s Synchronicity tour. The music was more than just tunes and lyrics. It was like opening a treasure box but instead of trinkets, this box was full of snippets in time that held some strong emotions.

When I turned off the engine, and with it the music, my thoughts continued to reel about how, while music is often a communal experience, it can also be a very private. Songs are like pieces of literature. The writer is telling their story, but the listener can interpret and even create their own story from that same work of art.

Forty years ago today, I was on the edge of 17 listening to the same songs on the radio that I listened to today. I thought that 40 was old, and I had no concept of how quickly that much time can pass. Forty years ago today, before the internet, or cell phones, or streaming services, I was excited that I had tickets to see the Police in concert in just over a week. And forty years ago today, I would never have guessed that, in the future, I would be able to get on this device called a laptop, find a recording that someone I didn’t know would do something called post on something called the internet, and I could listen to a moment in time I never thought I would experience again.

Yes, there is a recording of the Police Synchroncity tour in Charleston WV on February 13, 1984: Police 1984 Charleston WV.

Isn’t time travel cool?