I can see it in my mind's eye as if it happened earlier today. I am 17, sitting on the floor of my room. I am holding a prized item: the cassette tape I just received from Columbia House.
It is U2's new release, Achtung Baby.
I had listened to The Joshua Tree until the thing darned near fell apart. Over the summer, I had paid a $75 deposit (borrowed from my aunt) to rent from the record store a VHS tape (I know) of the live performance of Rattle and Hum, the album that followed The Joshua Tree.
Achtung Baby was the first album U2 had released in three years. This was the late 80s and early 90s. Waiting three years for an album felt like an eternity. And now I owned Achtung Baby.
I gingerly unwrapped the plastic, and my heart skipped a beat when I noticed the liner notes contained complete lyrics listings.
I put the cassette into the player, closed my eyes, and pressed play. After a second or so of silence, there was a garbled screech of distortion. I jumped, pressed stop, and opened the cassette door with dread, imagining the spaghetti of tape I would have to wind back in with a pencil. But no. Nothing was wrong. The tape was not being eaten. I took it out, looked at it, flipped it over, looked carefully again, then gingerly put it back in. I pressed play but left my finger hovering over the stop button.
There is was again: the jarring screeches. I stopped it again, certain my cassette was mangled. Again, it was nothing. A third time, I put it in and let it play. Soon, the fullness of "Zoo Station", the first track on the A-side came through.
And I listened.
This was no Joshua Tree.
This wasn't even Rattle and Hum.
This was something entirely different.
The sound.
The instruments.
The cacophony.
The style.
The lyrics don't even start until a minute into the song.
Bono's voice was muffled
"I'm ready for the laughing gas
I'm ready
I'm ready for what's next
I'm ready to duck
I'm ready to dive
I'm ready to say
I'm glad to be alive"
This was definitely no Joshua Tree.
And I kept listening. The entire album was so different.
"Zoo Station" was weird and broken and jarring.
"Mysterious Ways" was energetic and wild, filled with enthusiasm.
I cried when I listened to "One."
"Love is Blindness" was so beautiful, I thought my heart might crack open.
This album was wonderful.
I have said many times that I think The Joshua Tree, for me, is one of the most nearly perfect albums. I can listen to the entire thing, skipping no songs, then do it again. I can't say that about many albums.
Achtung Baby comes pretty close.
But they are so different.
At that time (and toady), I loved Rod Stewart. (The use of "love" here is no exaggeration). But I came to him mostly in retrospect. I was born in 1974, three years after the release of Every Picture Tells a Story. By the time Out of Order was released in 1988, Stewart's disco phase that had caused such outright anger his fans had already passed.
The same with Bob Dylan. I was a loyal Dylan fan. I wrote my senior honors English portfolio entirely on Dylan, so I knew about the absolute horror of his fans when Dylan went electric. But I only knew that in hindsight; I didn't live through any of the transitions. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan came out 11 years before I was born; Blonde on Blonde the final album of his electric controversy was released in 1966. I was three months old when the groundbreaking Blood on the Tracks was released. 
After their genre-jarring changes, I knew that both Rod Stewart and Bob Dylan would continue to have prolific careers. This was the early 90's. Rod Stweart was something of an MTV darling. Just 2 years later he would release Unplugged...and Seated and sell 3 million copies, the third-best MTV Unplugged live album behind Nirvana and Eric Clapton. Bob Dylan had been churning out albums for almost 40 years, and Oh, Mercy had gone platinum two years earlier. These beloved fixtures in my life would be fine.
But U2?
What in the world were they thinking?
This album, this sound was so new. So different.
Would they survive?
Would everything be OK?
(Spoiler alert: Of course, it would be OK.
U2 has sold 18 million copies of Achtung Baby.)
But in my living room heart racing after fearing my cassette had been eaten only to discover that this album was nothing at all like the ones I had known and loved so much? It was very very hard to see that bright future.
Full disclosure: I have never liked change. Ever.
That doesn't mean I don't like new things. I am almost always an early adopter of technology. And I like knowing about trends. I love learning new things.
But I do not like change. Especially abrupt change.
It makes me uncomfortable because I am deeply distressed by the unknown. Like I said, I like knowing things.
Today, while cooking dinner and cleaning up, the normal landmarks of life-in-quarantine, in the background, I was streaming The Joshua Tree followed immediately by Achtung Baby. But as I heard those opening seconds of the second album, I stood there startled.
I was rattled.
I realized how I felt:
The past two months have felt like every single day, the soundtrack is the first 45 seconds of "Zoo Station" on a loop. Not the rest. Just the first 45 seconds.
Jumbled.
Jarring.
Discordant.
Uncomfortable.
Wrong somehow.
Broken.
But in my kitchen, the music continued.
Soon Bono's muffled voice came through and sang about "being ready for what's next".
Then "Zoo Station" ended, and "Even Better than the Real Thing" came on, upbeat, zigzagging, and enthusiastic.
Then "One" started up.
Bono's voice, now clear,
"Is it getting better
Or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you now?
You got someone to blame
You say one love, one life
It's one need in the night
One love, get to share it
Leaves you darling, if you don't care for it...
Well it's too late, tonight
To drag the past out into the light
We're one, but we're not the same
We get to carry each other
Carry each other"
But that comfort is immediately followed by "Until the End of the world," a song now for me synonymous with grief.
In 1992, U2 performed a live version of it at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert. Freddie Mercury, the frontman for Queen, had died just a few months earlier at the end of 1991, and the whole world was a mess. Mercury had died of pneumonia that was complicated by AIDS.
So many people were sick.
So many people were dying.
I grew up in east-central Indiana, just an hour away from Ryan White, the boy who had contracted AIDS via blood transfusion and been treated horrifically by his school and community. Students, parents, and teachers had signed petitions to keep him out of school. He was no danger to anyone. When he was allowed to return to school, kids stayed home. He was a paperboy, and people on his route canceled their subscriptions.
He was only 14. I was 11.
The treatment of Ryan White brought nationwide attention to the worst of people, how people behave when they are scared and uninformed.
It highlighted that grown adults, powered by misinformation and fear, would willingly terrorize an innocent kid.
That experience had been very very real to me.
As someone who, even as a middle school student, followed the news, I knew about AIDS and the horrors it brought. I also knew there was no vaccine.
But I had seen Princess Diana walk into AIDS wards, pick up babies, and cradle them in her gentle embrace.
The science was there. HIV was a bloodborne pathogen. There were ways to protect yourself. Ryan White was no danger to anyone.
But people were terrified and they terrorized him.
Ryan White died in 1990. He was only 18 at the time, but I was only 16. That was too close. To real.
Then, just a year later, Freddie Mercury died.
Ryan White was a kid. Freddie Mercury was a god. How could this happen? Freddie Mercury was not supposed to die.
The grief was just too much.
Then there was the tribute concert. The remaining members of Queen. Metallica. Def Leppard. Bob Geldof (sans Pink Floyd) Guns N' Roses. Elizabeth Taylor came out and spoke.
The concert was broadcast live and I watched the entire thing.
The only part I truly remember is U2.
Bono stepped out and they performed "Until the End of the World" from Achtung Baby.
"Haven't seen you in quite a while
I was down the hold just passing time
Last time we met was a low-lit room
We were as close together as a bride and groom
We ate the food, we drank the wine
Everybody having a good time
Except you
You were talking about the end of the world
...
In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows, they learned to swim
Surrounding me, going down on me
Spilling over the brim
Waves of regret and waves of joy
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy
You, you said you'd wait
'Til the end of the world"
This was 1992. Or was it yesterday?
Sometimes it is hard to tell.
I am protected in my home. My kids are (mostly) doing remote learning. My husband and I both continue to work and get paid. Our home is safe. We have access to health care. And electricity. And wifi.
But turn on the TV, and the world is a bit of a mess.
The economic toll.
The suffering.
The terror.
The terrorizing.
This Is the first 45 seconds of "Zoo Station" on a loop.
But then I see reports that Taiwan has had no community transmission in a month.
New Zealand is moving to phase 2.
And those bring some much-needed hope.
Schools and education leaders are talking about how to reopen in the fall, and it is a scary jumbled mess.
How do we keep kids safe?
How do we keep staff safe?
How do we educate in this ecosystem of activity and trauma and hope and expectation?
I don't know.
I am not sure anyone knows.
I want very much to believe that people are trying to figure it out.
I really want to believe that those people in charge of "the plan" are consulting experts and listening to science.
That is my hope, but I don't know for certain.
So, for right now, I am stuck in those first 45 seconds of "Zoo Station." But I really have hope that at some point, things will progress. We will go outside again. We will meet with people again.
I have no idea when, but at some point, I will walk into a classroom full of children and, I hope, not feel fear.
I am not afraid of them. I am afraid for them.
I have to believe that at some point, we can step back into the rest of our lives.
The album will keep playing.
Which is good news.
Achtung Baby is an album full of fear, uncertainty, and grief.
But it is also beautiful.
And it was new.
It tried original sounds and evolving ideas and delicious combinations of instruments and vocals, talents of so many people brought together to try something different.
So, I guess I need to let the album keep playing.
Because eventually, "Zoo Station" ends, and in a little bit, you get to "One".
"We're one, but we're not the same
We get to carry each other
Carry each other"
I think that is pretty much the only way we move forward.
