In a Nutshell: Skilled but Lazy

I remember when the girls were little, I’d sometimes make something that was awful slightly more bearable by simply making up a song about it on the spot.

I have a knack for that, for making up songs.

However, there are times when maybe I shouldn’t have?

For instance, when we lived in one of those blah apartment complexes when they were about six years old, the girls got their true first taste of what death looks like when it happens badly. And we wrote a song about it. In fact, it was one of our favorites for a while –  “three days to die”. It was about the time it took a raccoon that had been run over and was laying on the side of the road by our apartment to die – three whole days it was twitching and crawling and gross. I called the animal control people and they apparently did nothing. Tried calling the cops and they were not worried about it breaking into my home so did nothing.

Anyway, it’s guts were showing, and it bled for a long time, crawled to the side of the road ever so slowly, getting run over but never being quite dead. It woulod twitch sometimes just when I thought it must finally be all the way dead. Then it finally died, but I only really believed it when the birds landed freely on its corpse. After it died, it then bloated and practically popped before the street cleaners got to it. But the point of the song was to make it easier to pass by the damn thing while driving home. While it was dying, the song was “all day to die”, then “two days to die” and then “three days to die” and then when it was decomposing in the Florida heat, the girls simply made up more verses every time they were grossed out.

Now, we were only singing to keep from crying.

My children are actually the kind of people who will try to nurse a worm they’ve stepped on back to health. They’re very considerate of all living things.

———–

… Edited …

I just find that no matter how crappy, crazy, adventurous, wild, silly, scary life is, it’s just better to have a song to go with it.

I wrote one about Costa Rica. It’s a damn site better than the awful other song about Costa Rica that I was forced to endure while I was down there… some folk singer’s kid wrote it. I don’t remember who.

I was looking at the art pieces on the wall of a gallery in a movie and thought “I could do better than that”.

I’ve been singing since I was a kid, and I can write songs and lyrics with absolutely no trouble. More than just comic stuff. I listen to the songs my daughters love by Taylor Swift and I remember that I did the same thing as a kid. I could totally do that now if I wanted.

I’m just too damn lazy is all.