"'Soon after he met me, he took me to lunch and told me he was in love with me. I thought it was sweet, but he was 11 years older and I had a boyfriend at the time who I was madly in love with.'"

"Eventually Mr. Fieger won Ms. Alperin after writing the catchy bass-driven track about her. She spent her late teens touring the world with him.... 'It played everywhere I went... It was in the elevator, it was in the dentist, it was on the airplane, in the market, played by every Top 40 band. It was everywhere. It was exciting, and it was everything.... When we broke up it was time to be my Sharona.... The word ‘my’ in that song says a lot. There’s not more of a possessive or obsessive word in the English vocabulary. He thought I was his soul mate, his other half, but it was a lot.'... Now a real-estate agent in Los Angeles, Ms. Alperin said that people will sing the song to her when she introduces herself without even realizing that she is the inspiration, and plead for pictures while she does open house viewings. 'There are good days and bad days... I’ve never gone a week without people singing "My Sharona" to me. It’s been with me all these years, and it would never do me any good to feel anything other than gratitude and humility about it. It’s nice to bring people excitement, and it’s a special thing in my life. I appreciate the wonderful experience it’s been.'"

From "The Song Is You … for the Rest of Your Life/What’s it like to be name-checked by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Amy Winehouse, et al? We asked, among others, 'our' Sharona" by Katie Bishop (NYT).

I'm trying to figure out how old Alperin was when this relationship began.  The NYT does not give her age, and Wikipedia says: "When Doug Fieger was 25 years old, he met 17-year-old Sharona Alperin..." 

That's an 8 year difference, but Alperin says 11 years. Does that mean Alperin was 14 when Fieger took her to lunch and professed his love? 

Wikipedia links to a 2005 WaPo article that is based on an interview with Fieger. He says: "Sharona was 17. I was 25 when I wrote the song. But the song was written from the perspective of a 14-year-old boy. It's just an honest song about a 14-year-old boy." Hmm. There's that number: 14. 

WaPo didn't go looking for the real Sharona. Its interest at the time was George W. Bush. The contents of his iPod — remember those? — had been revealed and one of his songs was "My Sharona." WaPo says:

The New York Times revealed the presidential penchant for "My Sharona" -- about an underage vixen -- in a story about Bush's iPod mix last week.

Yikes. 2005 was so long ago. Imagine seeing "underage vixen" blithely tossed out like that today! 

But back then, WaPo saw it as an exciting way to get at George Bush. Think of him, listening to the lyrics "Never gonna stop, give it up, such a dirty mind/Always get it up for the touch of the younger kind." WaPo prints out those lines.

But what about the NYT today going back to "My Sharona"? It's no longer about kicking around George Bush. It's just a way to crank out some kind of pop culture article. It's interesting that Sharona is a real estate agent and people hearing her name are forever singing the song to her and not thinking that she is the girl in the song. But why didn't "but he was 11 years older" trigger some curiosity over there at the NYT? Whatever happened to feminism? It comes and goes! It's discovered and forgotten, over and over again. 

Speaking of Presidents, why are we, right now, slipping into a time of forgetting? #MeToo arose in 2017, the first year of the Trump presidency.

ADDED: In 2010, NPR quoted Sharona Alperin, speaking of first meeting Fieger: "I was about 16 or 17 at the time. He was nine years older than me." 9 years older back then, but 11 years older now? How did that happen?