Recently, my husband and I watched a show called The Eagles: Breaking The Band. We saw The Eagles perform in Charlotte about 10 years ago, and it was an incredible concert. We had crazy good seats, and they played for hours. I’ve tried to talk him into going to Vegas for their concerts in September and October, but he has a lot going on, so …no dice. (See what I did there? Vegas/dice???)

When I was a little girl living in Spanish Fort, Alabama, in the 1970s, The Eagles were wildly popular. I remember going into the one of the anchor stores in Springdale Mall back then to peruse their single 45 records. The records were set up in a display case on the second floor near the top of the escalator…but I can’t remember if it was inside Gayfer’s department store or Montgomery Ward. It was one of the two big anchor stores there, and the year was 1977. I feel pretty sure I purchased Life in the Fast Lane and Hotel California there. I didn’t buy the album…just the singles, because for a nine-year-old, the album would eat up way too much of my allowance. So I just bought singles.

I remember playing the singles on my record player in my room for hours. I also remember some misheard lyrics. Specifically, I thought the line in Life in the Fast Lane that says “He was too tired to make it; she was too tired to fight about it” said “He was two-timing naked; she was too tired to fight about it.” What?!?!? Where did a nine-yr-old get that?!?! In fact, I still sing it that way, just because I think it’s funny.

I had a friend in Spanish Fort who lived just down the street from us on Caisson Trace. Her name was Cathy, and I thought her parents were cool. Her mother drove a cute little green Fiat with a sunroof…not just everybody had a Fiat. And her daddy had long-ish curly hair like Don Henley’s and a bushy mustache, and he had an antique Coke machine in their garage. That made them cool in the eyes of a nine-yr-old, but what made them even cooler was that when The Eagles came to the Mobile Municipal Auditorium on June 25, 1977, Cathy’s parents went to the concert! Yep…they were ultra cool.

So any time I think of The Eagles, I think of Cathy’s family. And thinking of her family reminds me that I was a sleepwalker as a child. One night, when I was sleeping over at Cathy’s, I walked in my sleep to her brother’s bed. I was a regular sleepwalker at home, but I had never walked in my sleep at a friend’s house! When I woke up in the middle of the night, I realized where I was, slid silently out of bed, and ran back to Cathy’s room…all the while praying no one knew. The next morning, when we were eating breakfast in their kitchen, her two brothers came in, and the younger one asked, “Which one of y’all got in bed with me last night?” My heart almost stopped. But I didn’t miss a beat on telling a lie…”Not me!” By the time breakfast was over, I’m not sure if he thought he was crazy or if he knew I was lying, but I didn’t care. The discussion was over, but my fear wasn’t. For the previous year or so, I had been sneaking into my parents’ room to watch soap operas and a miniseries caked Rich Man, Poor Man on occasion….totally against the rules at our house. Well, on those shows, they talked about how “sleeping together” made people pregnant. So, for months, my nine-yr-old self worried I might be pregnant because I had walked in my sleep to Cathy’s brother’s bed. That’s what happens when kids watch shows they don’t understand. For the record…I wasn’t pregnant. Aside from the fact that I was nine years old and her brother was eight, I actually slept, and I guess he did too, even though he realized I was there. I guess he just went back to sleep…probably scared him! I didn’t even tell my mother about it till I was 18 or 19…and we got a good laugh out of it then.

But now that I think about sneaking to watch those soap operas, I think I know where I got “he was two timing naked, she was too tired to fight about it.”

So yeah…The Eagles take me way back. Now I really want to go to that concert in Vegas. Maybe I can convince my husband it will be my early Christmas gift? Anyone else want to go? Tickets start at about $500 here.

But now, every time you hear Life in the Fast Lane, you’re going to hear “he was two timing naked.”