Bill dared to bet me the other day...
...but you want to be careful with that.
When I was 12 and she was 11, and we were in the captive space of the bed of my dad’s Mazda pickup, traveling across the country, my sister dared me that I couldn’t-—or perhaps simply wouldn’t-—sing “The Greatest Love of All (I Believe the Children Are Our Future),” by Whitney Houston, one hundred times in a row.
She was wrong.
The moral: Don’t mess with me. I *will* sing “The Greatest Love of All” one hundred times in a row, in a closed space where you can't get away, and you will have no one to blame but yourself. (PS--I know ALL THE WORDS. Every last one.)
When I was 12 and she was 11, and we were in the captive space of the bed of my dad’s Mazda pickup, traveling across the country, my sister dared me that I couldn’t-—or perhaps simply wouldn’t-—sing “The Greatest Love of All (I Believe the Children Are Our Future),” by Whitney Houston, one hundred times in a row.
She was wrong.
The moral: Don’t mess with me. I *will* sing “The Greatest Love of All” one hundred times in a row, in a closed space where you can't get away, and you will have no one to blame but yourself. (PS--I know ALL THE WORDS. Every last one.)
posted by Sarah Goss at 12:19 PM
12 Comments:
Wow. Remind me to never piss you off...At what iteration did your sister decide that it just wasn't worth it and try to fling herself from the truck bed?
And, as usual, there's a relevant _South Park_ reference, when Cartman can't help but finish the lyrics to STYX's "Come Sail Away," over and over and over...
I don't remember any attempts to fling herself from the truck, but there WAS a lot of tension on that trip... imagine three pre-adolescent girls (my friend Jenny was there, too) cooped up in the hooded bed of a pickup truck for hours and hours on end each day for a month and you will begin to understand.
Jenny and I also performed a lot of Shirley Temple songs with dramatic accompanying gestures that summer, which we were a little OLD for, upon reflection.
It WAS quite a trip! I remember it fondly, in spite of the inevitable tension from being in such close quarters. I can vouch for the Whitney Houston thing, too. Believe me, that's not something I'm likely to forget. :o)
Sure, we were about 12 years old--a tad long in the tooth for the Shirley Temple songs--but the way I remember it, we knew that. We delivered that Shirley Temple Festival as a nostalgic yet simultaneously mocking retrospective, a tribute to our simpler, younger days. Er, or something ...
Oh yes, Jenny is right... the Shirley Temple performances were suffused with irony and self-conscious kitschiness. Totally. :-)
PS
I looooove that episode of South Park, Bill... and I love "Come Sail Away" by Styx. That is one of those songs about which I maintain, you are lying if you say you don't secretly find it deeply moving.
There were THREE of you back there?!? Holy crap!!! And I thought my cross-country travels were an endurance test. Had any of you read Sartre's _No Exit_ at that point?
And I deny any and all emotional connections to the collected ouvre of Styx. Just becase I have ALL of their concept albums on vinyl...
Come to think of it, I don't believe Styx ever did a non-"concept" album.
"my sister dared me that I couldn’t-—or perhaps simply wouldn’t-—sing “The Greatest Love of All (I Believe the Children Are Our Future),” by Whitney Houston, one hundred times in a row."
Ah, you were so easily manipulated in those days. . . .
Dad
Hmmm, Dad, so according to that interpretation she *wanted* to hear the song 100 times in a row and manipulated me into performing her will?? Interesting view! (Of course, if there hadn't been a complete separation between the pickup bed and the cab, I'm sure you would have put an end to my performance before I completed the first verse!)
I'll bet you can't sing Wagner's entire Ring cycle 100 times in a row. :)
The trip you describe reminds me of being 5 and driving from New York to Wyoming in my parents' car -- all three of us brothers in the back seat. And this was in the days before car seats. I spent a week on the floor of the car, getting in the way of my brothers' feet while they slept.
Hee hee--are you the youngest, Matt? Sounds like the fate of the youngest. Although it also reminds me of MY fate on that same trip: there were three of us girls in the pickup bed, and two could sit comfortable with their backs against the cab, legs extended. The third had to sit perpendicular to the others' feet, at the END of the pickup bed, cramped between two wooden crates. That lucky person was ME more often than it was the other two, due to my dad's desire to put my snotty preadolescent self in her place. Woeful, self-pitying memory.
Oh, I'm the youngest by far - my brothers are 8 and 10 years older than me. By the time I was a snotty preadolescent, the allure of long car trips had worn off and we started flying places.
That's right, I was pretty sure you were the youngest. The real question is why our parents did this to us....
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