This is Our Song

"The next song that plays will be our song," Adam said while we listened to his iTunes play on shuffle. His itunes collection is like a Pizza Hut jukebox. It is stock-full of hits that you love and hits that you forgot about. A song comes on - Billy Joel, Backstreet Boys, Michael Jackson - and you think "oh yeah, this song. All right." Then you immediately want cheesy garlic bread.

We played this game a few times, deciding that "Damn Girl" by JT wasn't appropriate. Michael Jackson didn't quite feel right and Savage Garden was just too...tacky.

"The next song. This will be it. No matter what."

"Jingle Bell Rock" played next.

It's safe to say we don't have a "song". To be honest, I don't think most couples do. Really I've only known two that do.

Where does that notion of having a song come from? I always imagined it's your first dance or the song that played when you met or first kissed or something that you wooed each other with. But I don't think any of my couple friends have songs (if so, please tell me the story and song).

Growing up, my cousin Laura was the coolest. She was only a few years older than me, so when I was 11 and 12 she was the cool teenager I aspired to be. She was punky: listening to Deftones and Blink 182 while she dyed and cut her hair and formed anti-establishment opinions on everything. To me she was the coolest. Especially when she handed down her JNCO jeans to me - when they were no longer "cool" to wear (it's the kind of clownish clothing that Juggalos wear). I was an awesome 7th grader wearing comically giant pants when everyone around me wore tight faded jeans and Abercrombie sweaters.

Anyway, Laura and I were at the park when she began telling me about her latest boyfriend, Larry. I remember his name because she said, "Larry is a cute name" as if there was a list of cute names somewhere that she had confirmed this with.

We were listening to music in her room. Blink 182 was playing. "Adam's Song" came on. Laura said, with her head in a dreamy place, "This is our song."

"Adam's Song", for those who who not know, is about suicide. It's probably also Blink 182's ONLY serious song (remember how their album was called Take Off Your Pants and Jacket?). If a song is a reflection of your relationship, then you can probably imagine that Larry and Laura did not work out. 

But the couple that really does have a song are my aunt and uncle. My Aunt Laurie is only about ten years older than me, so when she was a teenager she was into all the cool alt-90s stuff and that was what I listened to when I first really started listening to music. I remember that she and my Uncle Tim danced to "Ice Cream" by Sarah McLachlan at their wedding. That was their song. She played it in her room one time for my mom and I before the wedding (mostly to my mom and I just hung around as per usual) and eleven year old me listened to the song and really understood the lyrics. I got it. "Your love is better than ice cream" What? How is that possible? Ice cream is SO good. It's the best. I will write a later blog post about how much I love ice cream. So I thought about it for the first time. "If anything is better than ice cream, it must be love."

Thanksgiving 09, I wanted to make a CD to play background music while people ate. This was mostly to avoid anyone turning a TV on while having holiday dinner - a giant pet peeve of mine. Dinner is for conversation. Watch TV after. So I put mellow, autumn-sounding stuff on it. "Ice Cream" seemed appropriate. Laurie and Tim came into that Thanksgiving with a tension between them with the heat of The Gaza Strip.

The song came on. Their anger melted away like...well...like ice cream. You could see it unwind from their faces and they looked at each other sweetly. Then they kissed. That was the power of a song. Just like magic, it made all obstacles in the way of your love disappear because that song was some kind of boiled down symbol of your happiness. There was simply no way to be mad while it played.

Songs that would be hilariously awesome "songs":

1. "The Monster Mash" - that guy who sings it. His name is Boris, I think.
2. "Bohemian Rhapsody" - Queen
3. "Push It" - Salt-N-Pepper
4. "Symphony no. 7 in A Major: Allegretto" - Beethoven
5. Probably anything by Tupac

Tell me what you think about "songs". Let's see if our lists match up. Regardless, I'm sure I'll be filled with gooey feelings next Christmas when I hear our song.