Today was a momentous day for me. I was driving home from a midweek treat, dinner out with an old friend (a restaurant with cloth napkins, oooh) when one of my favorite songs from my youth came on the radio: "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats. Now I'm sure the local radio station was not doing this by way of attracting controversy, considering recent events and the song's ignoble history.
But what hit me was this. I am now the parent of a small child. As a full-fledged Volvo-driving Suburban Mommy I am the target demographic for being outraged at a song about an evilly banal shooting in a schoolyard.
Instead, I sang along with Bob as I wound my way through the subdivisions, just as I did twenty years ago. And I still love every note and word of this classic tune. And I feel no sense of outrage, even considering what my reaction would be if it had been my child in the crosshairs. Why?
a) Because it's just a song.
b) Because the song does not celebrate the act it refers to.
c) Nor does it preach about the causes and effects of the act.
d) Because God alone knows what kept the silicon chips inside my head from switching to overload when I was sixteen.

Anyway, all of this is by way of saying that I'm glad that two years in hardcore suburbia have not totally morphed away my personality, and I can still hear a song about a distasteful subject without wigging out, getting the FCC on speed-dial, and writing shrieking letters to the Editor. Praise Bob.