The Case of the Missing LOL...A blog

So lonely...

When my daughter Lauren was very young she would, on occasion, get in trouble. And by on occasion I mean quite frequently. And by quite frequently I mean almost every day. And by that I mean every single day. It's not that she was a bad child, she just liked to test her limits. And by test her limits I mean she was a bad child.

When she did get in trouble she had habit of over reacting. I would send her to her room and she would stomp all the way there,  kicking and screaming and crying for reasons I am sure that even she was not aware of.  She was a real drama queen. At some point, if she was really upset, she would sit on her bed and sing a song while crying. It would go something like "Lonely, I'm so lonely. I have nobody, to call my own." She would just sit there and rock back and forth on her bed and sing that over and over again, sometimes until she fell asleep. I always sat outside in the hallway and tried not to laugh. I still laugh when I think about it. Not because I am a mean dad or anything like that(lol). It's just that she would sing it so funny in a very weird voice and I assumed she made the whole thing up. A kind of made up song she would sing when she felt sorry for herself.  When I think about it now I think maybe I shouldn't have waited outside laughing (But the song was so funny!). Maybe she sang those words so I could run in and tell her that she wasn't alone? But I didn't, not always, at least. I regret that sometimes. Okay, more than sometimes.

Flash forward about 12 years. I'm sitting at home working on something. And by something I mean watching TV. I'm flipping through the music channels trying to look for music to write by. And by write I mean not really write. After all I was not wearing shoes, which, in my life is a clear sign of not writing. I cannot write without shoes on. I don't know why you needed to know that. But I was sitting there not writing or reading in my Jordan (he's a basketball player right?) warm ups and my t-shirt that read "Jesus Loves You...everybody else thinks you are a pendejo" (don't ask) when all of a sudden I accidently hit the wrong music channel (R&B rap) and out comes this song by an artist (Is he? Is he really?) called AKON (sounds like a bad guy in Lord of the Rings). It was the "I'm so lonely song" that Lauren sang all those  years ago. IT WAS A REAL SONG (Is it? Is it really?). The beginning of the song sounded just like she sang it, like someone inhaled a balloon full of helium and tried to sing afterwards.

All these years I thought she had made up the little tune and there it was. I don't pay attention some times.

I  then looked for and found it online and played it several times. Yes, it was a dumb rap song about some idiot who thought he was a "playa" and couldn't keep a girlfriend and was now crying about it like a big baby, but now it's more than that to me.

It's about a little girl who felt so alone when she got in trouble. A little girl who had no idea what song she was singing (she does that a lot). And, mostly, about a little girl looking to get out of her own way so she wouldn't keep tripping over her own feet. A little girl wanting to so bad to work her way back to being happy.

She got there, by the way. She found a way not to trip over herself every day and has not had to sing that song for a long time now. I am not even sure she remembers it anymore.

But the song now, for me at least, is also about a dad who wasn't as clever as he thought. He wasn't paying as much attention as he should and he missed things he shouldn't have missed back then.

He also found a way not to trip over himself since then. Well, not every day, at least.