Ain't it a shame...

"I'll be there in the back of your mind
from the day we met to you making me cry..."

I work in a nursing home. One of my supervisors, an amazing, fiery little woman, declared "Take This Job and Shove It" to be her 'national anthem'. She sang it one day at work when the radio broke in our dining room and another nurse suggested that we sing to entertain our residents. Now, whenever someone is singing along with the radio, she always jibes, "They won't let me sing anymore."

Some people have a song that they feel is "theirs". It says all the things they want to say but can't. It becomes an anthem. I have known couples that had "a song". I have known couples that didn't. Mike and I... we had a movie, rather than a song, when we were first dating...

On our first date, I hadn't researched - checked out what was playing at the multiplex across the state line. I just wanted to know him. This mysterious boy, who had made me blush before I even knew his name. This handsome man who I wouldn't have even met if it hadn't been for a series of coincidences - a chance encounter that led to a marriage, a home, and three beautiful children. But on that first date, when two awkward kids were bumbling over who was going to buy the popcorn, or could he hold my hand, I was stumped because there were 7 movies showing and not one of them looked good.

I was leaning toward "Dinosaur" (which turned out to be, when we eventually watched it, a CGI version of Land Before Time, when I thought, from previews, it would be a 'Walking With Dinosaurs' semi-documentary-type-thing. In other words, glad we didn't watch that one). Instead, Michael talked me into seeing Shanghi Noon, a Jackie Chan movie. Now, my sister Sue took Karate classes in high school and college, and my brother Stan was always into that sort of thing. But my dad never got into martial arts too much, and I was, well, a complete and total nerd girl: introverted and overly analytical. I just wasn't interested in Kung Fu. But we went, and I actually liked it, and we got giddy drinking IBC and holding hands and I never wanted that date to end. We did eventually, have "our song". I wrote one, and it was our first dance at our wedding. But it wasn't like we would ever hear it on the radio and say, "they're playing our song." Still, whenever we saw an ad for a Jackie Chan movie, or Shanghi Noon was playing on TV, it was one of those moments.

Years later, when Mike walked out, so many, many songs bore painful memories. Ones we'd danced to, or sang along with together on the radio. He was a big fan of Elton John and I learned the lyrics to "Don't go breakin' my heart" just so we could sing it together. He liked Bon Jovi and Cher, Meatloaf and Poison. Boy had some eclectic tastes.

Then there were new songs, those that came out in the days and months after he left, that "struck a chord". "Who Knew" by Pink, especially. The first time I heard it on the radio, I was driving to get the kids at day care after a long day at work. By the time I pulled into the parking lot, I had tears in my eyes. I felt like I could have written that song, and yet, I didn't want to identify with it. I wanted more for myself than victimhood. I wanted strength.

Then one day, almost a year later, I was driving to day care once again when a song came on the radio. This became My Anthem.