Even though I haven’t heard this song in literal decades, it has been on the radio several times in the last week. Maybe because KISS is touring? At least, YouTube seems to think they are. I don’t know.

Look, KISS is, in some ways, a pretty entertaining band. They always have been. But the thing that really hits home right now is just how shocking they were during their heyday.

I mean, look at them. All that make-up. All that bravado. All that shock value. And underneath it all, arguably some well-made music that was fun to listen to. And people lost their minds over it — but not always in a good way. (If you saw the most recent season of Stranger Things, you have some idea of what inane nonsense I’m talking about.)

I look at this video now and think, *gigglesnort* that’s kind of goofy to look at but fun to dance to. But I remember when this was new and a lot of the grown-ups in my life were so unbelievably freaked out by this display that they thought it would literally destroy the fabric of society.

Now that’s something to laugh at.

On my most optimistic days, I envision a time when people can just be as different as they want without fear of narrow-mindedness bringing the hammer down on them. I choose to imagine a time when people can be as off-the-wall or as authentic (and sometimes those are the same thing) as they want to be without fear of dinosaurs staring at an asteroid persecuting them.

We are so not there yet, at least not where I live. But today I had an otherwise ordinary phone call with a complete stranger in a mundane bureaucracy who demonstrated the most excellent qualities that people are capable of, and wow, it was refreshing. It kind of made me want to dance. I will be paying that goodness forward.

Enjoy.