FUNNY THING ABOUT SONGS

FUNNY THING ABOUT SONGS

It’s the same old song

Our memories always seem to work in the strangest ways. Often, while we try to forget something, we’ll hear a song that will remind us.

Oh, speaking of that, remember that song. “Always something there to remind me?”

How true it is!

At my tender age of seventy-eight, I can walk from one room to another, get distracted and immediately forget what I walked in that room for. But on any given day, my schedule varies from one thing to another and can find a day to catch my attention. For instance, like just take yesterday.

Ah, yesterday!! No, not the Beatles song, “Yesterday” but Thursday, October 23. I’m a home healthcare aid and my boss was in a very foul mood. Without going into details, I came extremely close to walking out and leaving him to care for his invalid wife. What stopped me was her. I looked at her face and realized just how much he does not do for his wife. So, I stayed.

Before work, I’d done two loads of laundry, had breakfast, then left my somewhat sane house to care for a woman who suffers from Parkinson’s disease.

During work, my boss, thankfully left for the day. By the time he came back, he was in a much better mood; however, personally, as the songs says, “my give-a-damns busted.”

Taking care of her was easier yesterday. She was eager to do her exercises, which for a change, she breezed through. I realize that eventually, that disease will render her helpless but for now, her legs showed a bit of strength. Trying to be optimistic for her, I said it was really great seeing her towing the line. She laughed. It was a good day for her.

Enough about that, though.

After work, I went home only to realize that the meat I’d taken out of the freezer for dinner hadn’t defrosted enough to cook. Not happy about that but I knew I could still find something for us to eat.

My husband, realizing something was not quite right, asked me what happened. After explaining the day’s saga, he asked me if I considered quitting. I explained to him why I intended to stay but telling him, as far as I was concerned, there’d be no more friendly conversations between my boss and me. Talk about “Cold as Ice!”

After dinner, my honey cleared the table, and I washed the few dishes we’d used.

With the TV now on, we sat comfortably on the couch. Noticing something on the TV, I turned to my husband to comment on it. He’s fallen asleep. I smiled as I thought, well, there’s really no time in the rest of the day. I switched from TV mode to the DVR and watched something I’d recorded the week before but had no time to watch.

Finally, with my show over, I decided to turn on my laptop and write a few letters I’d been putting off.

There were a few letters I wanted to answer but chose to respond to Charlene first.

“Hey Charlie, I really need to tell you something very amusing!” Yes, I’ve been calling Charlene “Charlie” for over fifty years. Anyway, Charlie lives thousands of miles away so between phone calls, emails, and snail mail, we keep in touch, and I just could hardly wait to tell her what happened at my Zumba call on Tuesday.

Our Zumba instructor always chooses songs that can be easy on our old bones but that’s not the song he’d chosen that particular day. The song was by Miley Cyrus and the title was Flowers, but here’s the thing. We don’t do Zumba to the original song. Someone, somewhere modified it to fit in with Zuma by infusing that old song, I will survive.

As soon as the song hit the part where I Will Survive was added, I lost it! I started laughing and everyone around me wondered what was happening. My instructor came to me after class and asked what was so funny. Brian and I are personal friends as well as him being my Zumba instructor, so I had no problem telling him how I relate to that song.

It was in the seventies when my first decided to become my ex. My sons were eight and ten. After work one day, I went to the store and purchased that record and it became my theme song. I was determined to not allow my almost ex to destroy my normally good nature. The song helped.

One day, before I arrived home from work, my now ex decided to pay us a visit. My young son who still has the same sense of humor I have, said to my ex, “Dad, this is mom new theme song!” What Jim had done was turn the volume on loud before he placed the thin needle on the record. Then, he played it for my ex who almost imploded. When I walked through the front door, his face was red with anger and as he was about to slam the door, said, “Guess you think that’s funny!”

At that point, I had no idea what happened until my older boy, Ken explained.

So, when I told all this to my instructor, Brian, he laughed along with me. Now at least once a month, during our Zumba class, he’ll play that song and wink at me.

Yep, songs surely are a way of reminding us of the sad, silly, wonderful, and yes, just plain events in life, but then without our memories, I’m sure we’d be very bored.

So far, I have yet to cross that threshold to boredom.