My husband texted me from the office yesterday, saying, “Wanna feel old? Born to Run is turning 50.”

Say what?!

One of my most vivid childhood memories – and I don’t have that many anymore – features an 11-year-old me on the first day of 6th grade. I’m in a brand new school – and it’s nothing like Walter Jackson Elementary, with its dusty hallways, cheerful bulletin boards, and comforting, chalky smell. No, Oak Park Middle School is ultra-modern – an “open floor plan” of interconnecting pods and very few walls. There’s carpet on the floor and I can see into the other classrooms (class pods?) and everything is startlingly bright and clean.

The strangeness factor is high, and I am nervous. I am also in math class – never my comfort zone.

The teacher has just handed out our textbooks, and I open mine cautiously to see what fresh hell awaits. In the front, there’s a name scrawled in pencil. Kip Greenwood. The big brother of my classmate Dan Greenwood. I have Kip Greenwood’s old math book. This is exciting.

But not as exciting as what I find next. In the back of the book, I discover that Kip Greenwood – it’s his handwriting – has copied a long poem. It begins like this:

“In the day, we sweat it out on the streets
Of a runaway American dream
At night, we ride through mansions of glory
In suicide machines
Sprung from cages out on Highway 9
Chrome wheeled, fuel injected and steppin’ out over the line
Oh, baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young
‘Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run.”

Well. Imagine your 11-year-old heroine – almost 12, mind you – reading these words on her first day of middle school, in the back of her new math book – bequeathed to her by a (cute!) older boy  – in a strange, sci-fi looking building like no “school” she’s ever seen before. Imagine she’s on the cusp of adolescence, with all its awkwardness and intrigue, a shy, nerdy girl who loves poetry and mystery novels.

Imagine the hot flush of her cheeks and the tingly thrill up her spine. Just imagine.

I remember sitting there on that first day of 6th grade, as the math teacher droned on about math, reading that long poem over and over again, my heart pounding with newfound, secret knowledge.

The poem was wild. It was passionate. The speaker, “a scared and lonely rider” on a motorcycle, was in love with a girl named Wendy. He called her “baby.” He wanted to guard her dreams and visions. He told her to strap her hands ‘cross his engines. He wanted to DIE with her on the streets in an everlasting kiss, for goodness sake!

So this was middle school.

At the end of the poem, Kip Greenwood had penciled a name. Bruce Springsteen. I had never heard of this poet, but I knew him. I had gazed into his soul. My cheeks blazed on until the bell rang. (Actually, I don’t think Oak Park Middle School had bells.)

I can’t remember when it was that I finally realized “Born to Run” was a rock anthem, not a poem. Maybe late middle school or even early high school? Like my girlfriends, I was mainly listening to disco in the late 70s. But our male counterparts didn’t like that stuff, and by high school, they were all about rock n’ roll, with a particular reverence for some guy they called The Boss. We were starting to date these boys, so soon, we were listening to The Boss, too.

Springsteen’s songs of working class “broken heroes” racing cars and chasing dreams at the Jersey shore bore no more resemblance to our sheltered, white bread lives in suburban Alabama than the slick disco tunes from Saturday Night Fever, but there was a raw humanity in Springsteen’s music that disco decidedly lacked. His songs felt somehow both universal and distinctly American. Down in the heart of Dixie, we embraced this Jersey boy as our own.

Apparently, so did everybody else. Bruce Springsteen became an American icon, and five decades later, he still is.

But lately, his reputation as America’s blue-collar troubadour has become a bit shaky – and not just because he hasn’t actually been “blue-collar” in ages. In the Trump era, Republicans are increasingly perceived as the party of the white working class, while Democrats are seen as the party of educated elites. While Springsteen – always an outspoken liberal – hasn’t changed, the country has. Including many of his fans, even in his home state.

Back in May, a popular Springsteen cover band, No Surrender, had its long-scheduled gig at a club in Toms River, NJ, cancelled after Springsteen spoke harsh words about the Trump administration on his European tour.

Lead singer of the cover band, Brad Hobicorn, told The Guardian, “He (the club owner) said to me his customer base is redder than red and he wishes Springsteen would just shut his mouth. It was clear that this guy was getting caught up in that and didn’t want to lose business.”

Conservatives have long been critical of Springsteen’s politics, mainly in the standard way that conservatives always criticize wealthy celebrities who denounce our capitalist system while flagrantly enjoying its benefits.

But this standard criticism never seemed to lose Springsteen many fans – even among conservatives. Art is art, after all, and politics is politics.

What feels different in the Age of Trump – to me, anyway – is that Americans no longer seem willing (or able?) to separate artists from their politics. Politics infuses everything, now – including the music we choose to listen to, the movies we choose to watch, the books we choose to read. Everything.

I realize that’s a provocative statement to make here at the end of my column. I should back it up with evidence, and maybe I will in a later issue. I need to do more research.

For now, I’m just remembering an awkward preteen girl who discovered something amazing in the back of her math book – of all places – in 1976  . . . and paying tribute to the man who set our runaway American dream to music.

For half a century – 50 beautiful, volatile years – he’s been our bard and our balladeer. He’s been the rockstar of my lifetime, and probably yours, too. I can’t imagine our American soundtrack without Bruce Springsteen.

So thanks for everything, Boss. May you have many more glory days to come.