I vividly remember sitting in the back of my dad’s car driving to Richmond on the weekends to go see the Richmond Spiders’ football games. During the two-hour drive we would always seem to listen to the same music.
My dad loved Sixty Minute Man by Billy Ward & The Dominoes and we would sing it on the car ride up. At the time I thought it was about a guy that was going to beat up a girl’s boyfriend who wasn’t treating her right…boy was I wrong.
On one trip, my dad put in a brand new cassette tape (yes for you young whipper snappers I remember when cassette tapes and mix tapes were the latest and greatest technology before iTunes and Napster). The music was different…it caught my attention…it was cutting edge…it was Lionel Richie.
Prior to my father putting this revolutionary new music in the car stereo system I always thought he was cool…but now it had officially been proven. Lionel Richie, better known these days as Nicole Richie’s dad, even spoke in Spanish (or so I thought with the line we’re going to party, karamu, fiesta forever). I think we listened to the album five or six times on that trip up and back. With classics like Can’t Slow Down, Stuck On You and Hello I was hooked. I wanted to be Lionel Richie.
I mention this look into my own childhood simply because Wednesday night (Thursday morning) I revisited this time in my life when I couldn’t get that song out of my head. Over and over again there was Lionel singing to me…except it was my voice, so it was more like bad karaoke. They say music has the ability to bring you back to a specific time and place in your life and it does. Although this time instead of being reminded of how exciting it was to go to football games with my father, Lionel’s lyrics now seemed less exotic and more like a taunt.
For whatever reason, Wednesday night Nolin decided that he was going to have a fiesta from 2:40am until 4:30am…now maybe back in college I would want to be invited to that party, but not so much anymore.
Jenn and I were working together to get Nolin back to sleep. She went down stairs got a small bottle, some baby Orajel and prepared to change his diaper. In the early morning fog we sort of messed up the order. Instead of changing his diaper, soothing his gums and then giving him the bottle for a final knock out punch, Nolin got the bottle, his diaper changed then the orajel…yep he wasn’t going back to sleep now and the song in my head continued…
Well my friends the time has come…raise the roof and have some fun
Finally after repeated trips by each of us in and out of his room (because again when a baby’s screaming no one’s sleeping) I finally went back in and just picked him up and pleaded my case. He grabbed on to me tightly and I sang Lionel’s words. Finally his eyes closed and as he fell asleep I was transported back to when I found that song to be such a great connection with my own father.
Luckily, Nolin has gotten back to sleeping good again. It’s kind of like those factory signs they have to occasionally update…it’s now been 1 day since our last accident.
Our Modern Family 