Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Oh, yeah. I'm back. Where have I been?
Let's see...I was on a quest for the last of the state quarters missing from my collection (damn you, you elusive Arkansas!!!)
No, that's not it.
I've been camped out in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to figure out once and for all whether my scalp is dry, normal, or oily.
Nah...
I've been wigging out over the prospect of moving to an island for the next three years.
Hmmm, more plausible, but still not it.
Oh yeah.
I've been semi-comatose for most of the last two months because I'm back at work, raising a very mobile toddler, and gestating her younger sibling.
Yep, it's true, PS fans (if any of you are left out there), "Gigi" is getting an upgrade in November, to Big Sister.
Which brings me back to two years ago, when I inaugurated this blog: pregnant, working outside the home, facing an international move, and barely able to keep up with e-mail.
So mea culpa on the bloglapse. Now that I'm in Week 16, supposedly I'm going to be feeling better soon. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Meanwhile, it's past my bedtime. Night-night, my friends.
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.