All posts by Dona

17. Oh What a beautiful Girl who can’t say no

Music

I took speech in 8th grade. Not the kind you take when you need help with your expressive and receptive language, but the kind where you have to embarrass yourself in front of a bunch of other 8th graders.

We did a lot of performances and not really any speeches. Maybe that’s because our speech teacher was an actor of sorts. He liked to name drop and tell us who he’d most recently had lunch with. The only one I remember, or recognized was Sissy from Family Affair. That impressed me. In reality the class should have been called Drama.

Anyway. One of our assignments was to lip-sync song from a musical. I think the teacher said we could not use the Wizard of Oz, or I know I would have used a song from that musical. I remember going home and agonizing over it. The logical song would have been my favorite from Mary Poppins – The Perfect Nanny. I knew it by heart (and still do). However for some reason I promised a friend in class I’d let her use my album for that song.

Having eliminated the only two soundtrack albums I owned I was in a quandary until a friend of my mom came to the rescue and loaned me Oklahoma. I’d never seen the musical, but knew one song on this soundtrack – Oh What a Beautiful Morning. Sure, why not?

I played the song over and over again, reading the words from the record sleeve. I could silently belt it out as good as Gordon MacRae did in the movie. My mom helped me with my costume – a pair of her old straight-leg blue jeans, a plaid shirt and a bandanna around my neck. She even helped me fashion a lasso out of some rope we had left over from our laundry line.

I was excited, and knew I was going to do well. I sat in my regular seat and talked to Cindy who sat in front of me as the rest of the students seated themselves. When Bob S. sat down next to me I turned to him to ask what song he was performing. I didn’t need to ask. He was wearing a cowboy shirt, a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, a red bandanna and chaps. Chaps? Where did he get chaps?

“You can’t sing Oh What a Beautiful Morning!” I cried, “I’m singing that.” I don’t remember his reaction. I was already in tears. I do recall he tried to comfort me and offer me the use of his chaps.

The teacher was ok with having two Oh What a Beautiful Mornings, even though he’d earlier said we couldn’t lip-sync the same song as someone else. I think it was my hysterics. I was adamant, however. I’d do something else. Since we were not going to get through all performances that day, I had until we met again two days later to prepare for my new song.

I turned to Oklahoma again – The Surrey with the Fringe on Top? No – How could I sing about something when I had no idea what it was? Oklahoma? No. People Will Say We’re in Love? No I Can’t say No? Sure, why not.

I listened and practiced and practiced and learned the lyrics. Mom found me an old dress and a women’s old straw hat. I was ready.

I barely remember my time on stage except for realizing in the middle of the song that it was kind of odd that I, a shy, never been kissed, wallflower kind of a girl, was singing about not being able to say no to men.

16. I still remember you

Song Blog

I wrote about Rosanne yesterday because I attended a wrestling tournament at the school where she teaches and that made me think about, among other things, a singer we both liked.

Rosanne and I had a lot in common. We’d both visited England the same year, we were the same age, we both taught special ed and we both liked Harry Chapin. She, however saw him in concert – and got a kiss on the cheek. I only planned on seeing him in concert – in Chicago – the summer he died.

I probably first heard of Harry Chapin through his Cats in the Cradle which played on the radio a lot in the late 70’s. I bought his Greatest Shows Live album and remember listening to it in my first apartment.

On that album I liked a number of songs, but my favorite was probably Taxi. It told of a pair of former lovers who were briefly reunited in a taxi. He was the driver, she the passenger. The song talks about where they’d planned on being at this point in time and where they really were. I think the song was meaningful to me because of a recent breakup of mine. Thinking ahead to a point in time that if my former boyfriend and I were to meet, what we might say.

I can’t tell you what Rosanne liked about Chapin. She could have liked that song best, or another. But it was great to find a friend with whom I had some musical tastes in common. We couldn’t see Harry in concert together, so we went to see his brother Tom at the Birchmere.

15. Leaving on a Jet Plane – parting is not sweet

Song Blog

I’ll let my 17 year old self write most of this one:

I’m listening to my “John Denver’s Greatest Hits” album. Leaving on a Jet Plane is playing now. It doesn’t make me cry anymore – unless I’m feeling gloomy anyhow. I usually get gloomy after hearing it though. Good God! I was mistaken. It does bring tears to my eyes.

I always thought being in love as different than I know it. I guess I had in mind being with my love – most of the time – not the other way around. And everyone calls me “lucky”. Anyone with a love so close doesn’t realize how lucky they are. But then – I am lucky – not because I am in love with an English guy – but that the person I love loves me back – and that boy / man is Jeremy.

I wrote that on March 25, 1975 – over thirty years ago. I remember (maybe it is in a journal somewhere) that I used to imagine it was Jeremy singing that song to me.

I didn’t marry Jeremy – we broke up nearly four years later after leaving on many jet planes. I don’t know if this song would make me gloomy if I heard it again. Probably not. Nostalgic perhaps, but not gloomy.