Angry People Can’t Sing: Day 11
1.21.15
Day 11
Day 11, this shit’s almost over already.
When I was little, all I wanted to do was be older. I laid in bed and repeated, “I wish I was 20, I wish I was 20,” over and over until I fell asleep. I couldn’t understand how I would ever get there because every second felt like years. And now I’m 29 and I can’t remember anything. Not that I’m old but, jesus, this is going to be over soon.
I learned a valuable lesson tonight – I don’t know the lyrics to any songs. Greg was setting me up with gem after gem for an impromptu karaoke session and all I could do was mumble every 6th word or so. Bruno Mars, Paramore, Rihanna, these are my people. My car jams. But when the mic was hot and the tunes were instrumental I totally shit the bed.
I’ve come away with a new goal – to memorize 5 go to karaoke songs.
“Hey, what’s your favorite movie?” I don’t know. Pressure. Leave me alone.
“What’s your favorite song?” Shit. I can’t think of one.
I need to write down the answers to these common questions somewhere to avoid the bottleneck that always exists in the beginning of conversations.
You can’t put me in a box. The hell I can’t.
“Her eyes, her eyes
make the stars look like they’re not shining
her hair, her hair
so perfect …. dollars you are trying
if perfect wasn’t perfect
baby just stand and change
but everytime she asks me if she’s ok
you know i say, baby you’re ok
if that’s all it takes
then baby look this way
you know i say
when i see your face
there’s not a thing that i can’t change
cuz girl you’re amazing
just the way you are.”
What matters is that I sang it from my heart.
It might be worth it to look up the actual lyrics to the song.
I had a thought today, during a moment in the morning when I was getting angry at the kids for no reason, the way my dad used to get angry at me, I thought, “This is what I want to write about tonight.” It was supposed to be the opening to this essay but karaoke came in unexpectedly and rearranged my train of thought.
The first 20 minutes this morning were just ugly. I saw perfectly happy kids running around playing with each other and yelling and being excited and in my head I was nervously thinking about locking them in a room and playing them all in Hunger Games.
I think awful things in the morning when I’m not ready to be around people, especially when they’re 12 year olds with too much energy and really bad taste.
It dissipates though. Down to a simmer. Later in the day I can be perfectly happy and then one of those little wankers mouths off and I want to drag them out of the room by their ear. That’s some old man shit. I couldn’t drag them out though because I would feel awful, so I’m stuck, with no choice but to take deep breaths and let the anger pass, because that is as far as I’ve gotten.
