When you hear That Song

 In very, very late 1999, my now-husband flew to meet me in Brasil.  I’d been there for five weeks prior; the two of us spent three weeks there together.  It was an awesome holiday.  One of my favourites.  Really.

But this isn’t about the holiday.  It’s about the trip home.  We’d flown there separately, but we came home together.  São Paulo to Johannesburg, Johannesburg to Perth.  Mid-January, 2000.

When we got on the plane in São Paulo, it was immediately clear to me that there were exchange students (approximately a dozen of them) on our flight, heading home to South Africa after 12 months in Brasil.  They were all with the same exchange program (it was definitely not Rotary, possibly AFS, maybe some other group I was unfamiliar with), seated in a big group a few rows behind us.  I was six years past the experience of flying home from exchange, but I recognized them the moment that I saw them.  They all spoke to each other in English, but their accent wasn’t (only) South African anymore – they’d all had their English changed after a year in Brasil.  The change was different for each of them, but it was a clear and genuine change of accent.  For some, it was only on a few words. For others, it was on everything; an edge that changed every single pronunciation.  Every one of them dropped Portuguese words into their conversations – not an affectation of any sort; a genuine “this is the right word” feeling that didn’t even allow them to understand that they weren’t speaking English when they said it.  Absolutely no one called them on any Portuguese word in an English sentence – my guess would be that they were all still thinking in both Portuguese and English and didn’t even notice that any of the words weren’t English.  And every single one of them (even the late-teen boys) were visibly sad (and many were openly crying) as the plane took off.

I knew who they all were because I’d been them a few years earlier.  And everyone else on the flight knew them a little later, in between movies when there was only background music playing.  Specifically “Time of My Life” by Green Day.  They all sang.  All cried.  All hugged each other and remembered the many, many times they’d heard that song when they’d been in Brasil.  Even the ones who’d not seen each other between their flights to Brasil in January 1999 and their flights home in January 2000.  It was That Song.  The one they’ll always, absolutely always, remember.

For me, That Song is “What’s Up?” by The Four Non-Blondes.  I’m 46 now; 28 years past my return from Brasil.  And even now, 28 years on, that song reminds me of Brasil, and very, very specifically of my best friend (another exchange student), my host brother (who’d previously been on exchange to New Zealand) and of one of the guys I went to school with (who was my only Brasilian friend who knew all the words to the song in English).  Every time I hear that song, I remember my favourite dancing shoes (black, strappy platform Mary Janes with a curved heel and double buckles), my favourite shirt (midriff, twisted up in the middle with bell-bottom sleeves) and the red-and-white striped dress that I bought especially for New Year’s Eve.  I see the river (called Green, actually brown) that I walked over on my way home in the last four months of my exchange.  I see the church that was across the road from my second house.  I remember the walk up the hill to my first family’s home.  I see the praça (square) in town and remember dancing in the Club with the balcony that overlooked it.  There are so many memories associated with that one song, and they’ve all persisted, nearly three decades later, whenever I hear that song.