About Beth

"In Repair" -- John Mayer (Continuum, 2006)

I've been having a very hard time lately, as you might have noted from the inactivity here. I feel like I've been snuck up upon by the events of the last couple of years---time to pay the piper, get the emotional house in order. It doesn't appear that I'm going to be capable of doing much else until that happens...

So I was thinking of my Bethy Boo as a kid. You know, she always got singled out by the bullies for some reason. There was this awful kid who lived a few houses down, across the street, her name was Terry Kirk. I think Terry was my age but she might have been Beth's. Terry was mean and especially relentless with Beth.

One day, on the way to school Beth was sitting on the floor of the bus; we had one of those cool tram like buses with seating around the perimeter and nice carpets on the floor---practically everyone sprawled on the floor. On this particular morning, that nasty Terry Kirk stepped on Beth's hands. Upon return home, Beth told Mom and Dad of Terry's latest nastiness. My Dad had just really had enough of it. He told Beth that the next time Terry did something to her that Beth Ann was to use whatever object was most handy and clean her clock.

Well, it didn't take long to see if Beth had what it took. The following morning, Terry did something. This was in about 1970 - 1971. What Beth had in her hand was standard-issue metal lunch box, complete with glass lined, uber-heavy thermos full of milk. BAM. Right upside the little terrorist's head.

That evening, there was a knock on the door. Beth opened the door to find Mr. Kirk asking to speak to our Dad. Beth, with every bit of sassiness in her (and that was a good bit), said, "well its good you're here because my Dad has been wanting to talk to you for a LONG time". When my Dad made his way to the door, Mr. Kirk had left.

That may be my most favorite Beth story ever: hand on her hip telling Mr. Kirk that he was JUST in time to talk to my Dad.




Just for period reference and the opportunity to annoy Tracy, these were the years when she was actively denying her easily discernible crush on David Cassidy---not those light-weight Partridge Family wimps---NO! The hard rockin' artistic David Cassidy. Rock On, Tracy. I think after David Cassidy, she moved on to Elton John and then Steely Dan. If I remember correctly, those were the only three "artists" in her record collection when she went off to college.

Love you, sister.

John Mayer
Of course I love John Mayer; he's not one of my all-time heroes or anything but he's got something worth paying a good deal of attention to: his musicality, his lyricism, his, errr, stage presence. I'd been growing fond of this particular track recently but it wasn't till today that all the lyrics came through and I got it. Timely.

For the record, I hate that damned Mothers and Daughters song. Talk about wasting a good bit of music with schlocky lyrics.