moodyredhead

Day Ten: A Song That Makes You Fall Asleep

Today’s choice wasn’t all that difficult, really, but there was a tiny problem — I don’t think there really is such a thing as a song that makes me fall asleep.

In all fairness, though, it doesn’t really take much for me to fall asleep in the first place. This is by no means a lifelong condition; when I was a baby, getting me to fall asleep was apparently quite the labor-intensive effort. The only thing that worked for my mother was to give up, put me in the car, and drive me around. (For what it’s worth, that’s still pretty effective; I rarely sleep as well even in my own bed as I do in a moving car.) But these days, a quasi-comfortable chair and the opportunity to close my eyes is about all it takes for me to drift off.

That said, I do have a separate playlist on my iPod labeled “Bedtime”. It contains a mixture of quiet songs and acoustic versions of some of my favorites. While I don’t really need it to get to sleep, listening when I go to bed does seem to help me get to a deeper, more restful sleep more quickly.

So, for lack of a song that actually makes me fall asleep, I chose for today the song that I most often use to kick off my “Bedtime” playlist at night: “Glitter in the Air”, by P!nk.

“Glitter in the Air” is unlike most of P!nk’s other songs, even her other slow songs. Although she’s considered a pop artist, most of her music really has more of a driving rock beat, and is clearly meant to be listened to with the volume cranked up. Normally, her songs are ones that I belt out in the car, not music that I would choose for relaxation. Even her quieter songs, like “Who Knew?” aren’t anywhere near what you might call somnolent.

But, again, “Glitter in the Air” is different. It has a quiet, almost dreamy rhythm, accentuated by the fact that the only instruments behind the vocals are piano and a hint of acoustic guitar. Melancholy lyrics, combined with soft, slightly breathy vocals instead of P!nk’s usual all-or-nothing power delivery, create a softness usually absent from her work. The result is a song that provides the perfect backdrop for turning off my overactive brain off and letting myself float away.

Admittedly, it probably makes for an unusual lullaby. But as you might have noticed by now, I’m a fairly unusual girl.

Day Nine: A Song That You Can Dance To

When I was in college, one of my favorite times of the year was when the next semester’s course catalog came out. I loved looking at all the potential classes and sussing out what I needed to take and what I could fit in that actually sounded fun. That is, until my sophomore year, when I realized I finally needed to break down and figure out a phys ed class to take.

Most kids grow up loving recess and gym class. Not so for me. One of the happiest moments of my life was the day I realized that I didn’t have to take gym class past freshman year of high school.

You see, I am an uncoordinated dork.

I’m not sure why I’ve always been so bad at any physical activity. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t see properly until I was nine or so and they finally realized how badly I needed glasses? Whatever the reason, it’s been a lifelong problem. I didn’t learn to ride a bike until I was eleven. I broke my ankle playing basketball in middle school. I got a stress fracture in my right foot during the six weeks we played tennis in high school P. E. I even managed to nearly dislocate my knee in band — at least it was marching band, and not concert band — and that’s the physical activity I was best at.

So I realized this was a very important choice. I had to have a “physical activity” class of some sort to graduate, but what to take that wouldn’t leave me injured? Sounds simple, but when you have a history of ending up on crutches after taking a shower or stepping off a curb, you have to be careful. And then I found it in the course catalog, shining like a beacon: “Folk and Social Dance”, code for ballroom dancing with a couple hours’ square dance thrown in.

I may be mediocre at walking, but as it turns out, even I can dance. After coercing him into signing up with me, I dragged my then-boyfriend (now my dear husband) to the field house for class each Saturday morning. (As I suspected, it paid to bring my own partner; the vast majority of the class was female.) There we learned all kinds of dances — the foxtrot, tango, cha cha, two step, and my favorite: the waltz. The song we waltzed to was “Could I Have This Dance”, by Anne Murray.

That song, as well as the ability to waltz, came in quite handy a couple of years later when it was time for our first dance together at our wedding reception. Swirling around the floor together to that song is one of my few really clear memories of my wedding day, and also one of the best.

I have video of that dance, and I wish I could post it, but I currently only have a VHS copy. Suffice to say that, to my surprise (and even more to my mother’s surprise), we actually did really well. I even let him lead.

Most of the time.

Day Eight: A Song That You Know All the Words To

This one was a completely easy choice. And yes, I’m totally showing off.

To me, it’s sort of like the old “Magic Eye” books — remember the books of pictures, made up of smaller pictures, that made a 3-D image if you focused your eyes just so? The pictures, autostereograms, required you to “diverge” your eyes in order to see the 3-D portion.

Back in the ‘90s, when these became popular, every time we would run across a Magic Eye book, I would pick it up and look; this was mainly to tease my husband, who never could manage to see the three-dimensional image. “It’s a flower… it’s a boat… it’s a penguin!” (It’s really the only thing that having an astigmatism ever really did for me.) When I learned all the words to “One Week”, by the Barenaked Ladies, it served somewhat the same purpose.

“One Week” was the number one song in the fall of 1998. That was the same year I began working as an attorney for the state, and in September, we had staff meeting at a Tennessee state park in the middle of nowhere. Okay, “middle of nowhere” may be a bit extreme, but it was literally as far away as you could get from an interstate in southern Middle Tennessee. You could say I had a long drive to get there.

So, in order to keep myself occupied and awake on the five-or-so-hour drive, I popped my CD into my new car’s player and proceeded to spend a big chunk of the time learning all the words to “One Week”. If you’ve never heard it, it’s a very fast song, with a whole lot of words, and a chorus that never repeats exactly. It also includes a stream-of-consciousness rap section that is very random; it’s not nonsense, exactly, but it doesn’t make just tons of sense, either.

By the time I returned to Knoxville, I had learned the song and could sing along just as fast as the recorded version (even BNL doesn’t sing it quite that fast in concert). And my dear husband never could quite get the hang of it. We would listen in the car, and he would just shake his head at me, roll his eyes, and smile when he couldn’t quite keep up. I tried again recently, and I still pretty much have it. Not a big accomplishment in the grander scheme of things, admittedly, but I’ll take what I can get.

Oh, and please don’t think I’m too mean for teasing my husband that way. I didn’t really learn the song purposely to mess with him. And, I promise you, he has no compunction about whistling in front of me, knowing full well that I’ve never been able to. It all evens out.

Day Seven: A Song That Reminds You of a Certain Event

In yesterday’s post, I talked about Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me”, and how it reminded me of attending their concert at the Mid-South Coliseum. I mentioned different events I attended at the Coliseum: concerts, sports events, ice shows. But there was another event held every year at the Coliseum — each fall the arena hosted a rodeo as part of the Mid-South Fair.

Now, anyone who knows me at all would probably tell you that a rodeo is exactly the sort of event you would never expect to find me at. But when I was little, we went to the Fair each year with the same group of friends, and we often went to the rodeo. I may not have enjoyed it quite as much as the rides, games, and chocolate-covered frozen bananas, but it was definitely part of the experience.

As many times as we went, though I only have one specific memory of the rodeo. I believe it was the year I was five years old, which would have been 1976. When we met up with our friends that night, my mother had dressed me in denim overalls, with a red shirt and red ribbons in my hair. My friends, Tammy and Jill, ages five and four, were dressed the same way — right down to the ribbons in our ponytails. Off we went, arriving at the Fairgrounds only to be shuttled into the nosebleed section of the Coliseum after a mere glimpse of the midway.

And I do mean the nosebleed section. We may not have been all the way on the top row, but we were as far up as you could get next to the press box. We proceeded to drive our parents quite insane, begging to leave and go outside to do the fun stuff. Our agitation was only interrupted, briefly, by the lady who stepped out of the press box about halfway through the show.

What I remember most about the lady was that she had beautiful blond hair and a really sparkly outfit. Also, I remember how nice she was when she stopped and talked to us, telling us how pretty we were. But then she went on downstairs, and I didn’t think any more about it for a few minutes.

Back then, the rodeo always included a mini-concert. To our surprise, when it came time for the musical performance, down there in the spotlight, sitting with her guitar, was that pretty lady that had been so nice to us. Even more exciting, when she started to speak, she mentioned that she was going to sing a song about one of her own childhood memories — and she dedicated it to “the pretty little girls sitting on the top row, with the red ribbons in their hair”!!!

And then, the lady I had been talking to, who I had no idea at the time was Dolly Parton, began to sing “Coat of Many Colors”.

As exciting as it was at the time, of course I had no real appreciation for what was happening when I was five. I certainly had no idea what the song really meant or how it described growing up poor in the Smoky Mountains with nothing but her family’s love to keep her warm and happy.

But all these years, “Coat of Many Colors” has remained special to me. Not just because of the message of the song — that love is worth more than all the money in the world — but also because of the pretty lady that took the time to visit with three little girls and make them  feel  special, just like her mother made her feel special with that coat so many years ago.