I was listening to "Atomic Dog" the other day and it triggered one of those Proustian memories. (This is probably a first for George Clinton, having one of his songs mentioned in the same sentence as Proust.)

I first heard that song in 1984, riding an a classmate's car to a French restaurant in downtown Columbus. We were on our way to lunch with the French Club, because somehow eating in an upscale restaurant filled with Midwesterners was going to help us have a better understanding of French culture.

At the restaurant, T. ordered mussels, and M. teased me mercilessly. I'm sure there were other people along, but those two are all I remember. Not sure what we learned, although the place impressed me by serving lemon slices in the ice water. Some of my classmates had apparently never seen such a thing, either, and attempted to make lemonade by squeezing the slices and adding sugar. "We're now a public spectacle," muttered T., the kid who worried about bending his knees too much.

On the way back, our car was surrounded by flocks of children on a field trip downtown, probably to stare at the Statehouse rotunda. There seemed to be hundreds of them. "Where do they come from?" asked T. "They're a pestilence," said M. bitterly. But I wanted to get out and join them, despite my good clothes and the car. I knew we were just playing at being grown up. We weren’t fooling anyone, even if we had reservations. And, although we had to be back by sixth period, we had nowhere to go.

“Atomic Dog” was on, loud, in the car.

The restaurant is gone now, and I haven't seen my classmates in a long time. All that is left is this memory, which keeps bouncing around in my brain.

Bow-wow-wow-yippie-oh-yippie-ay.