You always hurt the one you love
Music provides the most powerful brain freeze.
After a post-shoulder-surgery checkup, we are driving back to my 92-year-old Dad’s apartment in the senior community where he and my Mom moved a little less than a year ago, just before she left us for good. We’re driving in my new Ford EV pickup that has all sorts of newfangled features, among them the ability to play music and read (and answer) text messages from my phone, hands-free.
I put on some tracks from my own album-in-progress, a project I’ve been working on for way too long, and suddenly he begins to sing in a quavering voice “You always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn’t hurt at all…”. I shut off my music and he continues “You always take the sweetest rose and crush it till the petals fall…”.
He tells me he imagines me singing this song, which gives me an idea. “Hey, Siri” I say, “play You Always Hurt the One You Love”. Despite being a geek, until now, I’ve never figured out how to use Siri properly. Connie Francis begins to sing in that amazing style where the words and phrasing are literally half-speed to the tempo. I am thinking that nobody gets how to sing a slow song anymore.
When I glance at him, my Dad has tears in his eyes. When the song is over, he reminds me that when I was little, I became upset while listening to Ella Fitzgerald. I asked him why he would crush a baby. He laughed then and explained that she was in fact singing “I’ve got a crush, my baby, on you” (it’s true that punctuation is important).
“Hey, Siri, play I’ve Got a Crush”. Frank Sinatra begins to croon and another tear trickles softly down my Dad’s cheek, but he’s smiling.