The Song that Remembers...

Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head?

Maybe you haven't heard the song in years but you're in a particular spot where you heard it and suddenly there it is and it will not go away. If you still watch old reruns of Friends or if you own all the seasons and have Friends marathons on at least one weekend a year, you will remember when Phoebe got "Oh, Mickey, you're so fine," stuck in her head. She tried ear muffs, listening to different songs, everything she knew to do but Mickey would not disappear.

It seems like I've been going through a whole play list these past few weeks. A trip through Tishomingo, my home town, put "The House that Build Me" into my head when we drove past the little two bedroom frame house where I grew up and it was gone. All that remains of anything is the tree that Mama planted out in the front yard. She put an old tire around it for protection. The tire survived but the house didn't.

For weeks that song kept playing in my head and then boom, one day I was having a particular tough time and a vision of my sister, who passed two years ago, popped into my head. She was singing "I want to sing and dance, wear my silver buckle britches and my tight fittin' pants." She always sang that to me, with her own twist on the lyrics, and did a little dancing rendition of the spoof from The Pirates of Penzance. I didn't care if the lyrics were only partially right. They made me laugh. Every. Single. Time.

A few days later I saw an old fashioned bumble bee in the back yard. One of those with yellow and black stripes. Now to most people it might not put a song in their head coming from Richard Simmon's exercise tape. But immediately I was humming "Great Balls of Fire." The story goes like this:

Sister decided that she and I would get skinny. We would meet at her house every night right after work, pop in the VHS tape that she'd bought and do all these dance moves with Richie baby until we were in a size three. But, no self respecting woman would exercise without the right equipment so she went out and bought us a pair of tights and a leotard. Mine tights were bright blue and my leotard neon blue and black stripes. Sisters bought herself black tights and a brilliant yellow and black horizontally striped leotard. We were fashionably ready to lose weight and eager to get started that first night. I'm not sure what she saw when she thought of when she looked over at me but I saw bumble bee flitting around the flowers when I glanced at her as we followed Richie darlin' doing his moves to "Great Balls of Fire."

We managed to make it all the way through the tape that night but by the end the bumble bee was stretched out beside me on the floor, trying as hard as I was to breathe. When we could finally make our weak, chubby knees haul us up off the floor, we made a beeline (pun intended) to the refrigerator, got out half a gallon of rocky road ice cream and two spoons and treated ourselves for not passing plumb out. The VHS went into the closet and may still be there.

And today I've got "Great Balls of Fire" stuck in my head and visions of bumble bees in my head...it's going to be a great day. I can see rocky road ice cream at the end of it.