Search for:

Through My Window III

My elderly neighbor had her great granddaughters over today. They kept playing Britney Spears’, Oops! I Did It Again. About the second dozen times I listened to it, I wondered if the grownups in the house had gone deaf, and almost immediately I heard the little old lady query, “Honey, doesn’t that record have other songs on it?”

A girl’s voice responded, “It’s a CD, Granny.”

“Whatever,” the woman said irritably. “Does it have other songs?”

Girl: “Of course.”

Granny: “Well, then why don’t you play them?”

Murmurs of dismay came from several girls, while one voice clearly responded, “Because this is the one we like.”

Granny: “Oh joy.”

Quilly is the pseudonym of Charlene L. Amsden, who lives on The Big Island in Hawaii. When she is not hanging out with Amoeba, she is likely teaching or sewing. Or she could be cooking, taking photographs, or even writing. But if she's not doing any of that, she's probably on Facebook or tinkering with her blog.

13 Comments

  1. I never did like this song, it is amazing what constitutes a hit.

    A wonderful Weekend is wished for you.

    I am looking forward to my vacation, it cannot get here soon enough. Thanks for the kind thoughts.

  2. Alas, your neighbors have been playing out a drama that is as old as the gramophone. Actually, it’s probably as old as rock music. Performed with the original rocks. James Thurber writes, hilariously as usual, of his youthful obsession with a recording of “No news, or what killed the dog”. A recording so worn out that it had a skip in it, repeating over and over the line ate some burnt hoss flesh. This would be, like, 1911. The piece appears in Thurber’s book My Life and Hard Times, and there’s an account of it here.

  3. Ohhhh you know… I’m a fairly tolerant soul … but I might have had to toss a few eggs into THAT party! LOL!

  4. Bill — when I was a teen my friend and I did the exact samething with a Jimmy Buffet album. We kept playing, “Come Moday,” until my friend’s mother took the record off the stereo and refused to return it.

    OC — I’m obviously going to have to read Thurber again. I read, My Life and HArd Times, when I was in 11th grade, and while I recall reading the stories and laughing until I cried, I don’t recall the stories themselves without significant mental nudging.

    Melli — the knowledge that we were in different houses and I could just close the window and make them go away kept me from getting too irritated.

  5. So glad you posted a link to the lyrics, being the obsessive linkfollower I am I had to go and look at them. Such meaningfulness, such depth, such bittersweet sentiment. I am truly broken, no, really, thank you.

    Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

  7. LOL! My sister does the same exact thing. If she finds a song that she likes, she will continue playing it over and over again until everyone within hearing distance is absolutely sick of that song.

    Fortanately though, it’s been a very very long time since we’ve had to listen to Britney Spears in our household.

  9. The Beatles started the “yeah yeah yeah” business. Or made it big business. Name me a band, or a singer, or a pretender (cf. Ms. Spears) who hasn’t slavishly followed the trail the Beatles blazed, ever since …

  10. Silver — I can say with certainty that that was the first time ever that Britney Spears invaded my home.

    Polona — the old lady is just as bad. She has been playing the same Charlie rRich album all morning.

    OC — proof that neither IQ nor an extensive vocabulary are necessities for acquiring fame and riches.

  11. I remember as a teenager doing this self same thing, if you liked a record you just played it to death, I have to be honest and say I still do it, allthough these days it tends to be restricted to 3-4 plays before wifey threatens to beat me up!

  12. If you like it then you like it and it is worth playing again. If it is worth playing again it is worth playing again and so it goes.

Comments are closed.