We were driving home when the song 'Friday, I'm In Love' started playing. The kids all adore this song and often sing along. It might be the only song by The Cure that they know. Well, they might be familiar with 'Close to Me’ and 'Why Can't I Be You?' but 'Friday, I'm In Love' is the one they can all recognize from the opening guitar notes and they can quote the lyrics from start to finish. Hearing their voices superimposed over Robert Smith's is one of those things that warms my heart.
This occasion was different than the dozens of other times we've listened to this song while driving around. Christian had some questions.
"Dad," he said, "I'm confused. In this song, every day of the week is kind of cruddy except for Friday. Why is Friday the I'm-in-love day?"
"Well, Friday just happens to be the day he's in love." I answered, thinking that would explain everything. I was wrong.
"Only Fridays?” Christian continued. “You would think the other days get better after that. It would be really horrible if you were only in love on Fridays."
"That's not quite what he's saying. It's more like every other day has sucked but today is Friday and today doesn't suck. So it doesn't matter what happened on every other day of the week because he's in love today."
"But it's only one day. What if today was blue or gray or black?"
“Because today isn’t blue or gray or black.”
“Huh?” He still didn’t understand.
"He isn't writing from the perspective that today is some other day of the week. He is writing this song on a Friday and singing it on a Friday. He doesn't care if every other day sucked because those days aren't today. Today doesn't suck because he's in love."
"But Tuesday and Wednesday broke his heart."
"It's not Tuesday or Wednesday."
Christian shook his head, "Why would he write about those days?"
This conversation was going in circles but I felt it was my parental duty to help him understand. "He isn't singing this song on Monday or Thursday or Saturday. He's singing it today. Because he is in love today. And today is ... "
You could see his facial expressions change as he contemplated the meaning of what I said. Finally, his eyes widened and he smiled. "Today is Friday!"
And in case the song isn’t stuck in your head yet, please enjoy the following.
Interesting convo - his questions seem logical to me. It's fun to hear kid's logic.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I don't care for the song.
It's a guilty pleasure song for me. And the kid's logic continues to challenge and stretch my thinking.
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