canseeohnays babble

A few: Plainfield Blues by Rev. Peyton et al, Brave New Baby by the now-retired Mary Prankster, Strange Lover and All My Tears by Julie Miller, and older songs: Dreams, Rhiannon, Edge of Seventeen.
The '80s and Stevie Nicks:
Some songs remind me of a Missy I knew. Famous for her red hair. Boys stole street signs for her. She smoked heavily, and used paper towels to show us how brown her breath was. "Don't you kids ever start!" Candidly discussed her boyfriends and passion for Van Halen while introducing us to eyeliner and eyelash curlers. Defiantly turned the stereo up as loud as possible; she declared that she wasn't afraid of neighbors calling the cops. She tested me, too--could I truly sing all the lyrics to Edge of Seventeen? When I could, she acted like I was the smartest child she'd ever encountered. Aside from her, several times, when I was perhaps eight or ten, I remember an older girl taking me aside and confiding in me about her problems and telling me I was very "mature for my age." I don't remember such exact details of the conversations, only that I enjoyed them. But then, there was also the tremendous and responsible Maria (pronounced MAHrea), who played games with me, laughed through her nose like she was going to sneeze, and lived in a big house with a swimming pool. Which was very fortunate for me, because, thanks to the Watervliet Arsenal swimming pool lessons--which included witnessing a simulated drowning that I was too young to understand was only simulated, and my father tossing me in the water unexpectedly (I recall myself sinking in a daze of bubbles and pale blueness, and thinking, wow, I'm going to die now...until he came in and dragged me out)--I wasn't the least bit interested in learning how to swim. But at Maria's parents' house, they let me hang out in the shallow end, and probably taught me some basics, until one day, she and her sisters convinced me to go under the ropes and touch the ladder in the deep end. And so I learned to swim. And later on I had a lot of fun, with my father and with my friends, at the arsenal swimming pool, too.