Final challenge, to write about a song heard at different parts of you life. And there it was. The theme from M*A*S*H. I could have done John Denver or the Carpenters or Kenny Rogers. But no. Of course not.
...Is Painless
I don't know how old I am.
Not big, not understanding,
but not so small that I can't remember.
Maybe it was my biggest cousin
writing down the lyrics.
Or someone else.
I don't know anymore.
But I always heard the song,
playing on our cheap black and white TV.
I didn't know it had lyrics.
But there they were.
I learned them all.
There were four whole verses,
and a chorus about something that was painless,
and brought on many changes,
I could take or leave it if I please.
I had no idea what it meant.
But the show was funny,
so it must have been funny.
The tune wound through my childhood,
seven or seven-thirty,
with Hawkeye and Margaret and BJ and Radar...
the whole crew. I knew them well.
And the song would twist through my head, the lyrics
--I learned later that they were meat to be absurd,
but I didn't know then--going through my head,
as I ran circles in gym class.
The sword of time will pierce our skin.
And I had a stitch in my side to prove it.
The reruns stopped for a while.
Or maybe I just had friends and records
and didn't watch TV anymore, except for what I chose.
Dallas was big then, but it had no lyrics.
Or, if it did, I don't want to know them.
(I imagine Bill Murray singing them in a lounge act.)
And then I was gone.
And I remember someone saying that no little girl
dreamed of landing Alan Alda,
so I guess my first TV crush didn't count.
(To be fair, it scares me that what I learned
was that it was normal to lie and cheat and
treat colleagues as conquests. And this was
the liberal side.)
But sometimes, I would catch a fragment,
coming from someone else's dorm,
or out a window as I walked home,
and I would wonder what changes
had been brought on.
And now, it is suddenly here again,
after so many silent years.
Not seven or seven-thirty,
but five until seven.
Every day.
Painless.