By Wendy Litner

As a city girl, I typically don’t mind public transit but there are times on the subway when I am overcome by a moment of sheer panic.  There I’ll be looking like your average commuter when suddenly my earbuds dislodge, blaring my IPod music for the entire subway car to hear.  A flush creeps up my neck.  I quickly readjust my disloyal headphones, sheepishly surveying the contemptuous glances of my fellow commuters.  But no matter how fast my reflexes, the damage has been done.  My isolation has been pierced.  My reputation wounded.  I have been publicly outed as an 80’s music fan.

And here’s the thing, I am not just any 80’s music fan.  I am a die-hard, know all the words, kind of 80’s music fan.  Let’s just say I have more Boy George tunes on my IPod than is appropriate or reasonable for anyone who isn’t hearing impaired.  And while I detest power ballads (Air Supply doesn’t count, right?), I still fantasize about a young Daniel-san LaRusso in his rising sun bandana serenading me with the “Glory of Love.”  Incidentally, people often debate the relative merits of Karate Kid I over II and I don’t know why because they are both clearly awesome.  I still maintain that theme song scene to be the most romantic one ever filmed and since the age of nine I have swooned on every viewing.  For reasons I still don’t understand, my husband refuses to wear the iconic headwear for me. 

In my defence, I also have the usual mainstream medley of U2, Coldplay and in my case Oasis. It’s just that while the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army makes me want to drum on my messenger bag, Culture Club’s Karma Chameleon makes me want to dance.  And I would too if I had a little more room on the subway, because generally speaking, peoples’ opinion of my outer shell is of very little consequence to me.  I am so consumed with worrying about all my eccentricities that I just don’t have time to fret about the rest of me.  While I am my own worst critic, I think the world of just about everyone else.  I seldom raise a critical eyebrow in others’ direction.  Subway voyeurism, however, makes me extremely uneasy because despite  my ‘live and let’ live mantra, I judge the books people read on the subway.  I judge them harshly.  Some might even say I am a subway book snob (by some, I mean my bandana-less husband). 

While I may not have an ear for music, I love language.  Books are my thing.  I devour them, dog-earing pages with my favourite passages and reading them over and over again.  Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been reading any Hemmingway since beginning to work full-time.  One of my all-time favourites “Millard Fillmore Mon Amour” is about a neurotic loner writing a biography about the thirteenth U.S. President.  By no means high-brow literature.  Despite my affection for quirky books, however, I at least try and read the latest quirky books.  When it comes to reading, I always try and stay current. 

In light of my song library, though, which is the musical equivalent of a really old Danielle Steel novel, my cheap headphones and my tendency to listen to music at an adolescent volume, I am hereby proposing a truce with the entire Toronto subway line:  I won’t judge your reading “Memoirs of a Geisha” 10 years after it came out, if you don’t visibly recoil when you hear me listening to “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

Deal?