We're gonna stay in touch, right? Right?

Today's am.fm.pm mixtape isn't a mixtape at all. It's a note scribbled in the back of your high school yearbook that you're not quite sure you ever read. Ever since you brought back some things from home to your apartment after the holidays, you've been feeling a little nostalgic. You haven't looked at your yearbook in well, years. Who are these people? Who the hell was this kid? Didn't you... you did! You guys totally danced together at the eighth grade summer sock hop, the one that Matt McNamara got suspended for drinking at. Weird how you forget about that shit, man.

As you read the note, it becomes clear that she didn't feel the same way about you that you felt about her, and you can't remember if that registered at the time. You remember how after seeing the movie Can't Hardly Wait for the first time, you decided to fake some grand deus ex machina like that: you wrote a love letter on the computer, dated it three years prior, and crumpled it up. It sat in your backback for a week or two getting beat up so it would appear as if you'd had this note for years. Sure, you'd only been into her since you had American History together last semester, but you were so into her that it more than covered the spread for all of high school. If personality wasn't gonna work, then dammit, you'd trick her into feeling the same way. You'd conspicuously plant the letter, act all shocked and adorable when she found it, and she'd be yours forever. Perfect.

You never gave her the note, and now, five years later, you think about how fucked up it was that you felt that this grand ruse was a reasonable alternative to just asking a girl on date. Some kids played sports in high school, but not you. You never did any theatre. You weren't a stoner, and you weren't a homie. You stare down your laser printed memories through troubled drunk eyes and think about how your real high school pastime was clumsily throwing around big words like love.

And yes, she'll think it's creepy if you call.

Styx "Come Sail Away"

Warren Zevon "Excitable Boy"

Synchronize "Sweet Times of Mine" (Foo Fighters vs. Guns N' Roses)

Self "What A Fool Believes"

Zapp & Roger "I Wanna Be Your Man"

The Doobie Brothers "Real Love"

Don Henley "The End of the Innocence"

Jackson Browne "Doctor My Eyes"

Primitive Radio Gods "Standing Outside a Broken Phonebooth With Money in My Hand"

Joni Mitchell "A Case of You"

The Arcade Fire "In the Back Seat"