It seems like every entertainer who is worth a damn is dying during my lifetime.  I’m quite sure I will leave some very important people off the list, but I can think of Merle Haggard, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Ritter, Heath Ledger, James Gandolfini, Robin Williams, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, David Bowie, and now…Prince.  Prince?  I could not believe it.  He was just in Atlanta the week before!  Of course now there are sinister stories coming out of the woodwork, just as there always are when a celebrity passes on into the great beyond.  I don’t believe them-not a single one.  Prince was a huge part of my youth, a huge part of my life.  I don’t remember a time when I didn’t listen to his music.  “Purple Rain” changed my life.  I use to always party like it was 1999.  On October 14, 1991, I was 20 years old, and waiting for the clock to strike midnight, so it would be October 15, 1991, making me 21 years old.  Of course, we had already been drinking a few or 10 Budweiser’s at our apartment in Athens, Georgia.  It was a Monday night, so we should have been studying and going to bed since we all had classes the next morning.  Alas, my degree was to be a PhD in partying and would only take me two years to complete….Anyway, the clock struck midnight, and my stepsisters and I hopped in the car–one was sober–and drove to this redneck-y bar that I remembered the name of for years, but I have now forgotten.  I can still remember what I was wearing.  I had on this red plaid knee-length skirt, a black sweater, black tights, and black flats.  I am almost 100% positive that I had a spiral perm in my barely shoulder length hair, which really accentuated my chipmunk cheeks.  And, like I mentioned before, I had already had several Budweiser’s (Sorry Mothah) . One of my stepsisters had turned 21 six months earlier. She and I were going to do a little karaoke.  That is actually the whole reason we chose that damn bar in the first place, if my memory serves me correctly….  It did not take us long to decide on “Little Red Corvette”-in fact, we may have decided on that song before we even got there.  We got a video of our very attractive performance to take home with us.  Unfortunately for me, I have not a clue what happened to that video.  I can only hope that it made it to the garbage dump sometime over the last 25 years, and not YouTube or the under underground internet.    It was only natural that we would have chosen that song, or really any Prince song.  We loved Prince.  I will always relate my 21st birthday to Prince.   Prince was a musical genius like none other that I may ever see in my lifetime.  I did not know him, but his music touched my soul–deeper than other musicians have.   I do not know what is after this life, but I bet that Prince is there–making music with Angels.