I spend some time on the ThreeWayAction forum boards – if that surprises y’all, it shouldn’t – and every now and then I see the “When it’s time to go” topic. Without fail, every time I look at it, my brain changes it into “When it’s time to change”, and that damn song is stuck in my head all day long.
What’s that, you say? You don’t know that song? Well, harken back to the late sixties (or actually the mid to late ’70s, when I saw it myself in reruns), and think about Peter Brady and his changing voice, and how it screwed up the song Greg had written for all of the Brady kids to sing and record, and how Greg threw a fit and Peter said he couldn’t help it, he couldn’t stop his voice from changing, and Mom and Dad Brady stood about looking concerned, and then Greg locked himself in his (and Peter and Bobby’s) bedroom and would write something, and then crumple it up and toss it over his shoulder and then repeat, and we’d know a lot of time had passed because the trash can was piled high and surrounded with crumpled papers, and Bobby and Peter were banging on the bedroom door wanting in, but Greg was the ARTIST, hard at work, and ignored them while he wrote and crumpled and wrote and crumpled, and finally held up a piece of paper with a big grin on his face, letting us know that he’d written the work of art he’d set out to write, and then it cut to the Brady kids in the recording studio singing and the chorus went “When it’s time to chaaaaaange, you’ve got to rearraaaaaange, who ya ARE into what you’re a-gonna BE! ShananananananaNUH, shanananananananNUH!” and there was a close-up of Peter singing “When it’s time to chaaaaaange”, and his voice was cracking, SIGNIFYING THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF CHANGE (it was really quite light and subtle, so perhaps you didn’t notice), and then Mom and Dad Brady stood about looking proud and pleased.
Remember that episode?
Well, the song keeps looping through my mind, and it’s become background noise I don’t even notice anymore until I bend over to pick up Miz Poo and sing, in Greg’s voice, “Every boy’s a man inside!” and then in Marcia’s voice, “A girl’s a woman, too!”, and Miz Poo – who was ready to settle down on the couch with me and get some belly rubs – becomes frightened and puts her ears back, then rakes her sharp-as-shit back claws across my chest, hitting some kind of important artery or something and then jumps to the floor to get away from me as quickly as possible, and I sink to the floor, blood jetting from my chest, and the kitties gather around to stare at and sniff the pool – nay, lake – of blood forming around me, and with my very last dying gasp, all I can force out between my lips is not “Tell the spud I love her” or “Tell Fred to hide the vibrator before his mother cleans out my bedside table and boxes everything up to send to my parents in her glee at my demise, oh yeah, and that I love him”, but rather all I can say is this:
“ya gotta take a lesson from mother nature, and if you do, you’ll know… when it’s time to chaaaaange, then it’s time to chaaaaaange…”
10/18/2000