I hate when you arrive at your destination just when one of your favorite songs that you haven’t heard in years and practically forgot existed comes on the radio. Do you 1) sit in the car and listen to the whole song, which is hardly as enjoyable (for some reason) as hearing it while your wheels are in motion, or 2) drive around the block, which feels forced, or 3) turn off the radio before the song is over because you’re late for work?

I had to choose number 3 today, when an old Chicago song came on, not one from the Peter Cetera era but from Chicago 18, with that replacement lead singer with the long curly hair. “Will you still love me for the rest of my life? I gotta lotta love that I don’t wanna let go.” I don’t know if I will still love you, because you’re not Peter, and because I have to turn you off now.

The only thing worse is when you flip to a new radio station only to find one of your favorite songs that you haven’t heard in years and practically forgot existed…come to an end.

Of course none of this should make a difference now that we all have iTunes and iPods and other iThings that allow us to hear all of those long forgotten songs at the click of a wheel…but there’s nothing like randomly stumbling onto a song you forgot existed. It’s like the difference between keeping a bowl of candy at your desk, candy you never touch because it’s always there and you can have it anytime, and finding a bowl of your favorite Hershey’s Miniatures (Krackels, if you have good taste) at your neighbor’s desk, where they’re like golden treasure and cause you to find excuses to talk to your neighbor six more times that afternoon.

I set out for my morning walk with purpose, because I need to soak up some Vitamin D and burn a few calories after last night’s minty cocktails and barbecue meatballs, and besides, I hear walks are supposed to be therapeutic, too. Along the way I encounter sidewalks full of leaves — the crunchy kind you can’t resist plowing through instead of walking around, going out of your way to crunch every leaf flat.

And I can’t help but flash back to when I was eight and had to walk to the café downtown after school to meet my dad so he could give me a ride home. Six whole blocks, bor-ing, and it took for-ev-er. But the crunchy leaves along the way served to ease the boredom, and I made sure to shuffle through and stomp on each and every one. Oh, get that one, too. And that one.

How could I have imagined back then that some thirty years later I’d go for these walks on purpose, and five times as long. And that I’d do it in this far-away place called Nashville, Tennessee, where my favorite girl singer, Sissy-Spacek-playing-Loretta-Lynn, sang at the Grand Ole Opry. And that I wouldn’t be on my way to meet my dad, get a quarter for the Ms. Pacman machine and maybe another for a Hershey bar, bug him to finish his coffee so we could go home already. That instead I’d be wishing I could have a cup of coffee with him, ask him how he’s doing.

Nope, I never could have imagined this.

But one thing hasn’t changed. The impulse to crunch those crunchable leaves. And that one. And that one, too.