Old Songs

These songs are like being a kid in the back of a car my Dad was driving around in part of upstate NY near West Point. Caribou, I mean, Carribean Queen by Billy Ocean, and I Ran by Flock of Seagulls. Little did I know that soon I'd be tossing french fries in the air for the seagulls on the West Coast at Ivar's. (Good grief, those birds sound squawky.) And I didn't know that soon I'd be seeing what my sister would call "Mountain Reindeer" all the time. (Well, on clearer days.) Or do what seemed bizarre in summertime--walk on the mountain, through snow, wearing sunblock and shorts. Or tag along on shopping trips to REI. Or lose a jelly shoe in the stony bottomed river running through the Hoh Rainforest. Or do all the cool stuff at the Pacific Science Center. This song is off the record my mom's boyfriend gave to us, maybe for Christmas, before we went to Seattle: Abiyoyo. Also, he gave me Johnathan Livingston Seagull to read sometime in the winter, before we left. Besides reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and some book by Shel Silverstein, I remember listening or singing along to One Grain of Sand and I thought it very beautiful, in the off-and-on flooded basement in the old woman's house in Renton. The song has been made into a book.