Silly Love Songs: The Soundtrack of a Sappy Boy

Stay with me while we grow old/
And we will live each day in springtime/
Cause lovin' you has made my life so beautiful/
And every day my life is filled with lovin' you.

-- Lovin You, Minnie Riperton and Richard Rudolph

The Grammy Awards have come and gone, and it kept the attention of my two boys (ages 5 and 7) surprisingly well. I guess it makes sense -- people making music and wearing outlandish costumes is kind of like every Disney musical they've ever seen. Some were more cartoonish than others, obviously.

I was most struck by the enthusiasm with which Jackson, the five year old, responded when The Bieber (as we call him around Chez Fuchs) appeared on screen. Again, not much mystery there; he's a child who wows adults with his rhythmic and dancing skills. And you can't turn on any of the channels my kids enjoy watching without seeing The Bieber promoting his new film, "Never Say Never." I've got highly educated friends of mine professing their love for the kid on their Facebook pages. It's kind of scary.

So as I'm witnessing my kids' idolization of Grammy hopefuls like The Bieber, I am prompted to take a look back in time to when I was at my sappiest. The year was 1976, and I was 12 going on 13, squarely in the most uncomfortable time in a boy's life -- the "pre-teen" years. The pop songs that dominated the spring of that year went right to my heart, pulling at its mythical strings. "I Like Dreaming," "My Eyes Adored You," and "Silly Love Songs" are three hits that sent me into flights of romantic imaginings. When I heard these songs I needed to find a quiet, private space where I could just sit and listen and place myself in the story I thought the song was trying to tell. One of those places was in the stand of pine trees that marked the property line between the Karneses and the Hills. I liked to climb to the top of these pines, some thirty to forty feet up. From that high I had a great view of the Francises' back yard, and I would often see Debbie, a dimple-cheeked girl with a dazzling, snaggle-toothed smile and sandy brown hair, running and playing with her three collies who barked non-stop, all day and night. The song was perfect in my mind: “Carried your books from school, playing make believe you’re married to me. /You were fifth grade; I was sixth, when we came to meet.”

Of course as anyone and everyone knows, 1976 also marked the pinnacle of the ascendancy of disco music, and although I certainly recall trying to make sense of "Disco Duck" and "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty," Rick Dees and K.C. did not feature prominently in the soundtrack of my childhood. Disco was the music that made its way through the rafters of the ice skating rink at Rye Playland, where my friends tried to rip the labels off the back of the girls’ Levi’s as they giggled past, fully aware of their part in the game. When you actually got the tag, which was rare indeed, the idea was to walk the girl in question outside to the boardwalk. Then you’d push your way through a cut-out bit of chain link fence and make your way down to the beach. Once there, you were expected to chat a bit. And then you made out.

I'd like to tell you I know this from my own experience at the time, but then I'd be getting into the realm of fiction. In reality, I may have gone skating once or twice at Playland, but I was self-conscious, awkward, and decidedly unsuccessful in the seeking and acquisition of Levi's tags. In a word, I was a sap. I made up elaborate stories in my head of defending Debbie's honor and rescuing her from those who would do her harm. These were usually personified by boys in our class who I identified as bullies. In my fantasies I beat them senseless, utilizing Kung Fu skills that made Bruce Lee's look amateurish. In tears, she would thank me, and we would kiss.

It wasn't until a couple of years later, not long after my braces were removed, that I finally had my first kiss. It was an abject failure. The girl was someone I didn't even know all that well; we were at a drive-in movie together with a group of friends, and I guess she just felt it was the thing to do. Her breath smelled like cigarette smoke and buttery popcorn, and she watched the movie with one eye as we kissed. That would have been in the summer of 1979, when I was sixteen years old. Late, I know, for a first kiss. 1979 was, appropriately, the year of Meatloaf's "You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth." The lyric continues, "It must have been while you were kissing me."

Thankfully, my first "real girlfriend" saved me later that summer, when she kissed me the way every 16 year old boy wants to be kissed. When I'm asked about my First Kiss, I usually delete the drive-in one, and move right to this one. It happened on a perfect, temperate night, and we were playing ping pong in an odd little outbuilding that her family had constructed for the kids years ago. It had electricity, and I remember this, because at an opportune moment, I turned off the light, pulled her to me in the darkness and had the kiss that made me understand what the big deal was. Thinking of it now, my breathing changes, and my vision clouds a little. (Or maybe I'm just getting to the age where I need my asthma pump and reading glasses.)

Keeping to the theme, our make-out album was Carole King's Tapestry, which came out in 1971. I liked that it was retro and not tied to the inane stuff that we were hearing on the radio that year. (Ah, who am I kidding? I loved "What A Fool Believes" by the Doobie Brothers and "Crazy Love" by Poco.)

There's one song that I listen to today that still brings me back to that perfect moment. (And it is a perfect moment. It's one of those moments I'll be muttering about as an old man, when my grandchildren come to visit me at the Home.) It's a stanza from Greg Brown's 1990 song, "If I Had Known."

A hayride on an Autumn night
Well we was 15 if I remember right
We were far apart at the start of the ride
but somehow we ended up side by side
We hit a bump and she grabbed my arm
The night was as cold as her lips were warm
I shivered as her hand held mine
And then I kissed her one more time

And Jane if I had known--
I might have stopped kissing right then
It's just as well we don't know
when things will never be that good again


Now, there are people out there -- some of whom are likely to be reading this -- who need to be assured that they're not to take Greg's words literally. Of course, there have been experiences that have eclipsed the one I described above since that time.

But the memory of that moment is pristine. It was as if my sappy boyhood fantasies all suddenly came to life. Not surprisingly, those fantasies tailed off after that, as I found that living in the real world wasn't so bad after all.

Oh and by the way, if I managed to get any of the songs I've referenced stuck in your head, I apologize.