Can't Smile Without You 'Cause You Fell in a Volcano
The random things that bob to the surface of one's memory...
Tonight I was at Drugstore Work, and the Muzak system played "Can't Smile Without You." Now, I almost never hear this song. My mom liked it when I was a little kid, and so I heard it all the time when I was a wee thing, but the number of times I've heard it since, I can count on one hand.
Anyway, the song came on, and suddenly I thought of volcanoes. There was an initial "WTF" moment, and then the little light bulb came on.
OK. So, I was a precocious child. I was a teeny little nerd. I was especially obsessed with scientific things, and one of my big obsessions was volcanoes. I don't know why. I have always been simultaneously scared witless of fire and fascinated by it, maybe that's why. But yeah, I geeked out big-time over volcanoes, and I was also a precocious reader, and so I would read books written for adults on the subject. Adult laymen, mind you, but adults.
On top of that, I had some old, old collections of fairy tales. One of the stories that was in my books was, theoretically, a Maori folktale. In retrospect, it was probably a horribly bastardized and bowdlerized Maori folktale. But what do you know when you're five or six, right? The story involved some guy who had to cross a volcanic caldera and keep from falling in the lava in order to win his true love.
So one day I was sitting around reading one of my volcano books. And that was the day my mom decided to go on a huge Barry Manilow binge. She must have played that damn record ten times in a row.
So there's little!me. I was 5 or 6 years old. I didn't really know anything about breakups and heartbreak. I did know about volcanoes, though. And I did know about people getting killed in melodramatic ways. Somewhere around the 5th time my mom played that song, I got it into my head that the reason the narrator was missing his girlfriend was that she fell in a volcano and died.
*gigglefit*
Tonight I was at Drugstore Work, and the Muzak system played "Can't Smile Without You." Now, I almost never hear this song. My mom liked it when I was a little kid, and so I heard it all the time when I was a wee thing, but the number of times I've heard it since, I can count on one hand.
Anyway, the song came on, and suddenly I thought of volcanoes. There was an initial "WTF" moment, and then the little light bulb came on.
OK. So, I was a precocious child. I was a teeny little nerd. I was especially obsessed with scientific things, and one of my big obsessions was volcanoes. I don't know why. I have always been simultaneously scared witless of fire and fascinated by it, maybe that's why. But yeah, I geeked out big-time over volcanoes, and I was also a precocious reader, and so I would read books written for adults on the subject. Adult laymen, mind you, but adults.
On top of that, I had some old, old collections of fairy tales. One of the stories that was in my books was, theoretically, a Maori folktale. In retrospect, it was probably a horribly bastardized and bowdlerized Maori folktale. But what do you know when you're five or six, right? The story involved some guy who had to cross a volcanic caldera and keep from falling in the lava in order to win his true love.
So one day I was sitting around reading one of my volcano books. And that was the day my mom decided to go on a huge Barry Manilow binge. She must have played that damn record ten times in a row.
So there's little!me. I was 5 or 6 years old. I didn't really know anything about breakups and heartbreak. I did know about volcanoes, though. And I did know about people getting killed in melodramatic ways. Somewhere around the 5th time my mom played that song, I got it into my head that the reason the narrator was missing his girlfriend was that she fell in a volcano and died.
*gigglefit*