This song, Sometimes, well, besides the fact that I’ve been playing it now everyday, multiple times, for a week straight, is just great, and aptly kicks off tonight’s post (and title). Seriously though, in life let’s think of things for when sometimes turned into all the time …
I got one.
Remember when we were younger and school felt like work? It was work. There was much to be learned; there was busy work for when substitute teachers came; homework; classwork; workbooks and worksheets. I remember I’d come home sometimes and when my mom would ask me how my day went, I’d sigh and say as I slung my plastic satchel down and slumped up to my piping hot plate all prepared for me to devour, “I don’t know, mama. Today was a lot of work. I worked real hard.”
She and my dad would just laugh. It really tickled my dad who was usually covered in a day’s worth of cement and dust, and my mom would just shake her head and say, “Lord have mercy. You just don’t know the half of it.”
I’m beginning to think that I don’t know any of it.
Friends, the “system” was trying to tell us something, and I wasn’t listening -- that’s for dern sure. The signs were everywhere – with work compounding itself to school terms, but I just didn’t see it.
For the most part I loved school though. It was exciting to go places in books, and learn the magic of numbers and words and see things come together. But I won’t lie to you. My favorite part of school each and every day until the sadness that was seventh grade was recess. I missed recess well into high school (but not so much in college once I figured out that part of your “freedom” for going to college came with self-proclaimed emancipation days).
Recess was sweet! Stepping in at the same bat-time, same bat-channel each day to rescue my restless limbs with the promise of open fields, monkey bars, tetherball and when Jesus was good to me, sunshine. Oh how I loved me some recess.
I thought nothing could top it, until May of each year. May meant one more month until my one-time favorite gadget or toy would be rescued from teacher jail, or the “June box.” The opening of the “June box” meant it was summer, and time to flee from all that learning, time for recess all day every day in days that were long and open for a country kid like me. Summer meant that next year I’d be a grade up, probably smarter, hopefully taller (not so much) and please, sweet baby Jesus, in a class with some decent, “gifted and talented” kids and a great teacher like Mrs. Hunnicutt, Mrs. Bray or Mrs. Looper.
Let me bring it on home:
Summertime meant that the fleeting, limited time that was recess (or sometimes) became all the time, available like your neighborhood 7/11.
That meant Danita had all day to play. All day to race and ride my bike and pop wheelies. All day to pick blackberries, shake muskedines from trees and beg our elders to please, oh please split the watermelon. All day to figure out if mean ol’ Aunt Frinnie was really stealing our stray pets and flushing them down the toilet. All day to be just quick enough to not get bitten by Aunt Ella Mae’s evil ass Dobermans. All day to beg Uncle Johnny to take us down to the river and go fishin’. All day to pray that somebody had enough arm strength to churn us some ice cream.
The freedom to be as one wished went from being relegated to mere moments out of my day to being available for my heart’s desire all day, y’all. That was a beautiful time.
Now it seems just the opposite has occurred. My childhood "all the time" has gone to a sometime, and that sometime is now named, the Weekend.
Weekend. Who thought of that word? It’s certainly an end; an end with little means. But then some weekends feel like pre-weeks. Don’t you hate it when you live for your weekend swearing you will escape from work only to find that once the weekend arrives you’re already dreading Sunday night? It happens to me every single Saturday at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I just get sad. I start looking around me wherever I am, searching for something to cling to, some way to stop the time so I don’t have to go on.
… some way to stop the time so I don’t have to go back to work.
Work.
Now it stands alone. Isn’t that something? It no longer needs a compound; it’s revealed itself, like Darth Vader:
“Danita.
(Stealth-like breathing, which has to be shaking back what will soon be the eruption of ghoulish laughter)
I am your exiiiiiiiiiistence.
(Cue Vincent Price laughing now)”
It’s a word that fills me with the most uncomfortable disdain, and makes me finally feel old enough to be mocked.
And it has become all the time! when all this time I was thinking it’d be part-time, like a lover in a Stevie Wonder song.
When did this happen? And why? What is this about? Where is this headed? Who started this crap?
(That’s right you pr specialists … there are 5 w’s listed above. This could be one smokin’ release. I wonder who’d run it?)
Ya see that? That there in the parentheses??!!! Amazing. That’s work, workin’ on me right now. I’m almost disgusted with myself, but it’s also funny to me because it would be a good release.
Nevertheless listen to Joe (and if you don’t have this song and can’t get it, let me know, I’m happy to send it to you because you need it):
“Why don’t you (ahem, work) let go of my thoughts, and all my shoulds and oughts and change my mind? ‘cause it’s been so long … I’ll change my mind, I’ll change my mind …
When does sometimes turn into all the time?
Gets so hard to break the motion, ‘cause once it’s in motion it’s hard to fight, and it gets so much harder to make it right, I’m gonna make it right.”
I have to make it right. My mom laughed at me again not too long ago. She called at the end of my day, sort of at the time when I would’ve been sidling up to my dinner plate (I miss living at home) and asked, “How was your day?”
“Oh mama. It was work. All day I worked.”
Laughter. “Girl you don’t know the half of it.”
She still talkin’ ‘bout halves. I don’t like the sound of that because that means I’m obviously not even close to this being over, and like pickin’ on special kids ridin’ the short bus to school, that ain’t right.
Suddenly my mind just flooded with what feels like 10 song titles and lyrics relevant to this topic – like I got Google on the brain. They all seem highly relevant in pieces and they are as follows:
Don’t Panic – Coldplay – “Oh, all that I know, there's nothing here to run from, ‘Cause yeah, everybody here got somebody to lean on.”
Man in the Mirror – MJ – “I’m gonna make a change, for once in my life. It’s gonna feel real good, gonna make a difference, gonna make it right.”
Change is Gonna Come – Sam Cooke – “It’s been a long, a long time comin’ but I know a change gon’ come …”
We are the World – USA for Africa – “There’s a choice we’re making, we’re saving our own lives.”
Slave song by Cartman – “Days nevuh finished, massa got me working, someday massa set me free.”
Imagine – John Lennon – “You may think that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”
Motherless Child – this church lady moaned it one time for me and I’ve never forgotten the feeling it gave me; just flat out despair – “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.”
Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen – Louis Armstrong – “Sometimes I’m up and sometimes I’m down …”
Freedom – George Michael – “I think there’s something you should know, I think it’s time I told you so, there’s something deep inside of me, there’s someone else I’ve got to be …”
Tomorrow – Quincy Jones & Tevin Campbell – “We can go anywhere we want, any road we can take, and we’re never, never, never too far from tomorrow today … and tomorrow is just for us to share …”