Born Too Late

There are people who have a head for numbers, or remembering historical dates, or chemical formulas.

I remember the words to old songs.

That was brought home to me last night when we went to hear a group called the Pony Tails, whose sole hit was "Born Too Late'' in 1959, perform at a local Elks Club.

Fortunately, especially considering the short dresses they were wearing, these were not the original Pony Tails, but a more contemporary group of three women and two men who pounded out at least three hours' worth (that's when we went home) of oldies.

And whether it was Dion, Danny and the Juniors, the Shirelles, the Supremes, the Diamonds or the Dixie Cups, I could usually identify the song and the "artist" (OK, using the term loosely) just a couple of bars into the song.

All I can figure is since I went to a boarding school for high school where radio reception was spotty at best, I simply drank in all of this pop culture when I came home, and it stuck in my brain (unlike Latin vocabulary words, for example.) And it has yet to unstick.

Last night, two friends and I even got called up to the front to sing our own version of "Book of Love.'' I love books like that with only four chapters.