Warning Labels on Sad Country Songs

It's the one you didn't hear that gets you. Soldiers have said that about bullets in battle. I wouldn't know and I have all the respect in the world for the men and women who do, so I'll believe them. In a story told by author Tim O'Brien, a soldier in Vietnam is struck down by a bullet and more astonished, angry actually, that he heard the shot than that he'd been hit. There would be some solace in my mind to believe the shot is unheard. I don't ever want to know.

Coming home from the office today, energized and feeling good about an upcoming trip with my son Patrick,  I put on AM 1550.  Love this station; they play classic country songs--the ones that tell a story and you can identify the singer by his or her voice. (Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Cash) Two blocks from my office I'm listening to
Warning Labels on Sad Country Songs. Got me thinking that would be a good idea. Don't want to hear a sad country song today.  I like the story so I didn't change to Triple M.

Roll On Eighteen Wheeler, a song I've heard and never listened to got my attention so I listened. Near the happy ending the song tells us the "Big Guy upstairs was listening" and he sent our daddy home safe and sound.  Daddy, not the police, called the family. God answered that family's prayers and it struck me in the center of my chest six inches below my throat. Another family who knew the magic words. Right here is where I should have taken cover. But I didn't. Don't Take The Girl was  the bullet you don't hear that gets you that got me. A little boy is begging his dad to not take the girl fishing with them. "Take my best friend Beau, take any boy in the world, but don't take the girl". You know where this is going, they get married, have a baby, and something goes wrong. She's fading and the once a boy dad is praying "Please don't take the girl", We don't know if she lives, the song ends and I  turned into my neighborhood.

Now I've got that ache in my chest and in my head above and behind my right eye. Son of a bitch.  I don't know war and I don't know what it's like to be under fire. This is no comparison but it felt like I was frozen in the open with no place to take cover.  I reached the safety of my garage feeling a little wounded with my mind now in a place I didn't want to look just right now. And then, because it seemed like just the right wrong thing to do, I went to You Tube and searched
Sad Country Songs. Who'd You Be Today looked like the most painful title. Peculiar thing about pain, it, like love demands to be fed.  My morphine is writing down the experience. I'm good. That little episode is in the past and carved into this blog to stay forever. Yes, they do need warning labels on sad country songs, but only so we know which ones to turn up.