![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
LJ Idol Week 8
May. 21st, 2022 04:15 pmPrompt: "You are an opossum living in the trashcan of my heart"
I read the prompt for this week and thought, “Seriously?! That’s the prompt?! How in the world am I going to write about grieving the loss of my dad with an opossum in a trash can?!”
I decided it might help to spark ideas if I heard the song from which the lyric came. I typed “you are an opossum living in the trash can of my heart” into my browser and received links to numerous memes with pictures of opossums. A photograph of two opossums hugging was very cute, although I had never thought of opossums as cute. I have not given opossums much thought at all, except once when I was driving home to Alabama after a wedding in Mississippi and I thought all of the Mississippi opossums must be suicidal based on the number of them trying to get hit by my car. They did not succeed.
I did not succeed in my first Google attempt at finding the song, either. I found the memes and a website discussing opossums in the role of spirit animal, and encyclopedic information about opossums, but no song. My second attempt I typed, “you are an opossum living in the trash can of my heart song lyrics” and received links to advertisements for trash cans, links to love songs with the word heart in the title, the same opossum memes I had seen before, but no song. I went to the YouTube app on my phone and repeated the process. No results!
How could I not find this song? It couldn’t possibly be this hard! An unpleasant thought occurred to me. With a shudder of distaste, I typed “you are a possum living in the trash can of my heart song lyrics” and several links to songs appeared. I sighed at the atrocious spelling ability of the internet.
The first link was for “The Possum Song” so I clicked on it. It was not the song from which the lyric came, but it was a hilarious parody of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Instead of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” I heard “The opossum freezes in fright” and rather than the chorus “a-weema-weh” it was “it’s in my way” which changed each verse, ending with “it’s on my plate.” I laughed. I live in Alabama and know people who have eaten opossums, but I am not, nor do I have any desire to be, one of them. “The Possum Song” was very funny and made me think of the song it was parodying, which I have always liked and has fond memories tied to it.
My family has always loved watching figure skating. I’ve even seen exhibition performances in person by Olympic figure skaters such as Scott Hamilton, Dorothy Hamill, Katerina Witt and Brian Boitano amongst them. One particular time, we were watching a competition of professional skaters on television. Brian Orser skated to the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” which delighted me. His costume was very unusual, though, especially at that time, and my grandma took one look at him and said, “He looks like a drunken rooster!” We all burst out laughing and from then on “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” was “The Drunken Rooster Song.” My dad had an amazing voice which I unfortunately did not inherit (Forget the bucket, I can’t carry a tune with a forklift!) and he’d sing “The Drunken Rooster Song” to me. I added in the “a-weema-wehs” and he never complained that I couldn’t sing. My dad taught me all sorts of fun and silly songs with which I drove my mom crazy. I learned “The MTA” which my grandma paid me a dollar per hour not to sing in her presence. That was a lot of money in 1980! My maternal grandparents lived next door to us so I was rolling in cash. We sang “I’d Rather Suck on a Lemon Drop” and “Mairzy Doats” and “Lemon Tree” and “High Hopes.” In the latter, my dad always used female pronouns in my honor.
After falling down the rabbit hole of YouTube Music, or should I say the opossum hole? Do opossums live in holes? I didn’t actually read the encyclopedic information I found on opossums, I found the song with the line, “You are an opossum living in the trash can of my heart.” It was a fun song, but a love song, and has absolutely nothing to do with my dad. I never heard my dad mention anything about opossums. He had many stories about raccoons, though.
My dad grew up on Gun Lake in Michigan and their community was plagued by raccoons getting into their trash. His parents and all the neighbors tried many different tactics to keep the raccoons out of the trash. One buried their trash cans and put large rocks on top, but the raccoons moved the rocks. Another put chains around their trash cans to keep the lids on, but the raccoons somehow got the chains off. My paternal grandfather bought state-of-the-art trash cans that had latches that had to be flipped three ways in order to open them. He was horrified when the raccoons were smart enough to figure out the latches! No one around Gun Lake tried the method of dealing with raccoons my best friend Joan’s mom used—she always left food out for them! One night, two raccoons came and pressed their faces against the sliding glass door and one of them knocked! Joan said, “Mom forgot to put the scraps out.” She rummaged around the kitchen, put a plate together, knocked on the door, and the raccoons backed up to the other side of the porch. Joan opened the door, put the plate out, and closed it quickly, allowing the raccoons to come to their feast. Joan’s family never had raccoons in their trash.
I was in the house on Gun Lake where my dad grew up every summer until I was eight and the family decided to sell the house after my grandpa died. We made the trip from Missouri to Michigan for at least one week each year and saw my dad’s parents and sister, and my four cousins, who were all much older than I was. They no longer had so many raccoon issues as when my dad was growing up. My favorite thing was to go on a walk with my dad and visit all of the neighbors’ dogs. I knew all of the dogs’ names and thought they looked forward to our visits. We also fished, primarily for bluegill and perch. I put my own worms onto the hook. My mom had my dad put her worms on for her, since she didn’t want to touch worms. To her great distress, I had no problem with touching worms, or anything else involving dirt. My dad would have taught me how to clean the fish we caught, but my mom insisted I was too young to use a knife. In all fairness, she was probably right about that. My dad also taught me how to swim. I was four or five and was playing on my oldest cousin’s inner tube. She was over a decade older than I was, the tube was way too big for me, and I fell through the middle and sank like a rock. My dad dove in and scooped me out. I was fine, and he immediately began to teach me how to swim. My dad was a fabulous swimmer, and did manage to teach me to swim, although I did not have his innate talent and was never as good at it as he was.
I may not have inherited my dad’s singing or swimming abilities, but I did inherit his love for people. My dad was a CPA and I am a hospice chaplain. When my dad had his first stroke in 2008, thankfully a minor one, he was back working a week later and I drove him around to visit his clients, pick things up, drop them off. I had always thought my dad didn’t like technology. Even though he had a computer, email, and fax machine, he still drove to take care of business in person. I realized during the couple of weeks that I drove him around for work, my dad and I did the same thing for a living even though we have different professions—we drive around and talk to people.
My friend Christine mentioned what I inherited from my dad in her sermon at his memorial service. I did not have the service recorded because my husband Arthur does all of the video and sound things for our church and I wanted him to be sitting next to me, not at the console in the back of the sanctuary. It occurred to me only this week to ask Christine if she had a written copy of her sermon, which she does! It was particularly meaningful, since she knew and liked my dad. I’ll be glad to have it for myself and plan to share it with my cousins.
When I first saw this week’s prompt, I thought it would be impossible to continue my theme of writing about my dad, but somehow I managed to do exactly that.
I read the prompt for this week and thought, “Seriously?! That’s the prompt?! How in the world am I going to write about grieving the loss of my dad with an opossum in a trash can?!”
I decided it might help to spark ideas if I heard the song from which the lyric came. I typed “you are an opossum living in the trash can of my heart” into my browser and received links to numerous memes with pictures of opossums. A photograph of two opossums hugging was very cute, although I had never thought of opossums as cute. I have not given opossums much thought at all, except once when I was driving home to Alabama after a wedding in Mississippi and I thought all of the Mississippi opossums must be suicidal based on the number of them trying to get hit by my car. They did not succeed.
I did not succeed in my first Google attempt at finding the song, either. I found the memes and a website discussing opossums in the role of spirit animal, and encyclopedic information about opossums, but no song. My second attempt I typed, “you are an opossum living in the trash can of my heart song lyrics” and received links to advertisements for trash cans, links to love songs with the word heart in the title, the same opossum memes I had seen before, but no song. I went to the YouTube app on my phone and repeated the process. No results!
How could I not find this song? It couldn’t possibly be this hard! An unpleasant thought occurred to me. With a shudder of distaste, I typed “you are a possum living in the trash can of my heart song lyrics” and several links to songs appeared. I sighed at the atrocious spelling ability of the internet.
The first link was for “The Possum Song” so I clicked on it. It was not the song from which the lyric came, but it was a hilarious parody of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Instead of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” I heard “The opossum freezes in fright” and rather than the chorus “a-weema-weh” it was “it’s in my way” which changed each verse, ending with “it’s on my plate.” I laughed. I live in Alabama and know people who have eaten opossums, but I am not, nor do I have any desire to be, one of them. “The Possum Song” was very funny and made me think of the song it was parodying, which I have always liked and has fond memories tied to it.
My family has always loved watching figure skating. I’ve even seen exhibition performances in person by Olympic figure skaters such as Scott Hamilton, Dorothy Hamill, Katerina Witt and Brian Boitano amongst them. One particular time, we were watching a competition of professional skaters on television. Brian Orser skated to the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” which delighted me. His costume was very unusual, though, especially at that time, and my grandma took one look at him and said, “He looks like a drunken rooster!” We all burst out laughing and from then on “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” was “The Drunken Rooster Song.” My dad had an amazing voice which I unfortunately did not inherit (Forget the bucket, I can’t carry a tune with a forklift!) and he’d sing “The Drunken Rooster Song” to me. I added in the “a-weema-wehs” and he never complained that I couldn’t sing. My dad taught me all sorts of fun and silly songs with which I drove my mom crazy. I learned “The MTA” which my grandma paid me a dollar per hour not to sing in her presence. That was a lot of money in 1980! My maternal grandparents lived next door to us so I was rolling in cash. We sang “I’d Rather Suck on a Lemon Drop” and “Mairzy Doats” and “Lemon Tree” and “High Hopes.” In the latter, my dad always used female pronouns in my honor.
After falling down the rabbit hole of YouTube Music, or should I say the opossum hole? Do opossums live in holes? I didn’t actually read the encyclopedic information I found on opossums, I found the song with the line, “You are an opossum living in the trash can of my heart.” It was a fun song, but a love song, and has absolutely nothing to do with my dad. I never heard my dad mention anything about opossums. He had many stories about raccoons, though.
My dad grew up on Gun Lake in Michigan and their community was plagued by raccoons getting into their trash. His parents and all the neighbors tried many different tactics to keep the raccoons out of the trash. One buried their trash cans and put large rocks on top, but the raccoons moved the rocks. Another put chains around their trash cans to keep the lids on, but the raccoons somehow got the chains off. My paternal grandfather bought state-of-the-art trash cans that had latches that had to be flipped three ways in order to open them. He was horrified when the raccoons were smart enough to figure out the latches! No one around Gun Lake tried the method of dealing with raccoons my best friend Joan’s mom used—she always left food out for them! One night, two raccoons came and pressed their faces against the sliding glass door and one of them knocked! Joan said, “Mom forgot to put the scraps out.” She rummaged around the kitchen, put a plate together, knocked on the door, and the raccoons backed up to the other side of the porch. Joan opened the door, put the plate out, and closed it quickly, allowing the raccoons to come to their feast. Joan’s family never had raccoons in their trash.
I was in the house on Gun Lake where my dad grew up every summer until I was eight and the family decided to sell the house after my grandpa died. We made the trip from Missouri to Michigan for at least one week each year and saw my dad’s parents and sister, and my four cousins, who were all much older than I was. They no longer had so many raccoon issues as when my dad was growing up. My favorite thing was to go on a walk with my dad and visit all of the neighbors’ dogs. I knew all of the dogs’ names and thought they looked forward to our visits. We also fished, primarily for bluegill and perch. I put my own worms onto the hook. My mom had my dad put her worms on for her, since she didn’t want to touch worms. To her great distress, I had no problem with touching worms, or anything else involving dirt. My dad would have taught me how to clean the fish we caught, but my mom insisted I was too young to use a knife. In all fairness, she was probably right about that. My dad also taught me how to swim. I was four or five and was playing on my oldest cousin’s inner tube. She was over a decade older than I was, the tube was way too big for me, and I fell through the middle and sank like a rock. My dad dove in and scooped me out. I was fine, and he immediately began to teach me how to swim. My dad was a fabulous swimmer, and did manage to teach me to swim, although I did not have his innate talent and was never as good at it as he was.
I may not have inherited my dad’s singing or swimming abilities, but I did inherit his love for people. My dad was a CPA and I am a hospice chaplain. When my dad had his first stroke in 2008, thankfully a minor one, he was back working a week later and I drove him around to visit his clients, pick things up, drop them off. I had always thought my dad didn’t like technology. Even though he had a computer, email, and fax machine, he still drove to take care of business in person. I realized during the couple of weeks that I drove him around for work, my dad and I did the same thing for a living even though we have different professions—we drive around and talk to people.
My friend Christine mentioned what I inherited from my dad in her sermon at his memorial service. I did not have the service recorded because my husband Arthur does all of the video and sound things for our church and I wanted him to be sitting next to me, not at the console in the back of the sanctuary. It occurred to me only this week to ask Christine if she had a written copy of her sermon, which she does! It was particularly meaningful, since she knew and liked my dad. I’ll be glad to have it for myself and plan to share it with my cousins.
When I first saw this week’s prompt, I thought it would be impossible to continue my theme of writing about my dad, but somehow I managed to do exactly that.
