In 1981, I was still looking at that bright edge of seventeen, aching to vanquish fifteen, hoping for more freedom at sixteen, and thinking at seventeen, no one would treat me like a kid anymore. So funny how your perception of time and age change over the years. This song seemed to ache and yearn in all the ways I did at the time.
Whenever I am dealing with an adolescent girl in story, this song helps recall all that passion, confusion, want, and curiosity. I do know most adolescent girls are probably not the frightful terror I was back then when I knew it all. My daughter certainly seemed to traverse her adolescent years with far more aplomb than I managed. Different aches. Different yearnings.
Some few months before my daughter moved to New York, she and one of her good friends took me to see a Fleetwood Mac cover band. My daughter loves the music of my youth more than I did when I was her age, and she and her friend listened to the stories these old songs conjured up from my past. The band closed with Edge of Seventeen, and I was amazed how a song can make something that happened long ago seem like it was only yesterday.
