We took my parents to see Jersey Boys at a local dinner theater for their birthdays — you know, a nice family night out, decent buffet, a little toe-tapping. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, Jersey Boys tells the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons — their rise from scrappy Jersey kids to pop legends, and all the drama, heartache, and tight harmonies along the way. It’s like an episode of VH1 Behind The Music with incredible vocals and better suits if VH1 had existed in the ’60s.
I figured I’d recognize a song or two. What I didn’t expect was to be transported back to my childhood the minute “Big Girls Don’t Cry” hit the speakers…
Like, instant flashback.
I actually laughed out loud. Not because the performance was funny (it was great!), but because that song yanked me straight back to my grandma’s living room in the late ’80s, where we were deep into our weekly ritual: Sweatin’ to the Oldies.
Short shorts, striped tube socks, and tank tops — none of it moisture-wicking, all of it loud. Dumbbells? Please. Grandma handed out canned vegetables like we were prepping for the low-budget Olympics. Green beans, peas, creamed corn — whatever was in the pantry became a weight set. For extra intensity, she’d break out the soup cans. You haven’t known arm day until you’ve done a full Richard Simmons routine with a family-sized can of chicken noodle.
There we were, tiny and dramatic, flailing our arms with pantry goods while Richard Simmons cheered us on from the TV like we were training for an all-night dance marathon. It was chaos. It was magic. It was Grandma. And she meant business. No slacking. If we stopped, she’d flash that “don’t make me come over there” look while she shook a soup can in your direction.
When the sweating stopped, we’d collapse onto the couch just in time for Days of Our Lives. Grandma had to watch her “stories.” The transition from Jazzercise to daytime drama happened faster than the sands through an hourglass. There we were grapevining to “Dancing in the Street”, and the next thing I know we’re watching Marlena get possessed by the devil again, or Stefano DiMera fall off a cliff, get shot, fall again — this time off a balcony — and still show up the next day like, “Miss me?” How many times can one man die or fake his death? Apparently 13.
It’s wild how a song can unlock a memory like that — like someone cracked open a dusty photo album in your brain. One minute you’re watching a musical. The next, you’re eight years old, holding canned green beans and trying not to clock your cousin with a faux bicep curl or drop the beans on your toes.
What hit me most wasn’t just the memory — it was the joy. That silly, sweaty, unfiltered kind of joy that shows up in the most ordinary routines. Grandma wasn’t trying to create a core memory. She was just trying to stay healthy and keep us from turning the living room into a wrestling ring. And yet, here I am, decades later, feeling it. Laughing. Grateful.
Joy doesn’t always arrive with fanfare. Sometimes it’s tucked inside soup cans and old songs, hidden in the rhythm of routine — the kind of joy you don’t realize is joy until years later. It lives in the small, silly rituals. The sweat. The hourglasses. The grapevines in tube socks.
And if you’re lucky, it dances back into your life-frizzy-haired, full-hearted, and falsetto—just when you need the reminder that the ordinary moments were never all that ordinary.
Rachel L. Richard is a small-town farm girl turned suburbanite, a delightfully irreverent optimist, Mrs & Mama, floppy dog ear scratcher, lifelong learner, channel surfer, wanderer, believer, occasional creative, out-of-practice musician, cupcake addict, book devourer, and lover of all people.
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