If you like pina coladas…

…and getting caught in the rain….  Sure, we all know the words to this song.  It’s catchy, it rhymes, even Jimmy Buffet has covered it--  But last night as I was rolling silverware at Hagan’s (super awesome 2^nd job where I get to, get this, talk to lots of people!), the song came on our music system and I got to really really listen to the words.

So, let’s summarize in my terms—

This guy is sick of his wife/girlfriend/mistress, whatever--  While she sleeps beside him, he’s skulking through the personal ads-  Lo and behold he finds this font of loveliness that just seems to be the perfect woman on earth.  In order to make this song work, he of course has to write back to the ad with his own pithy version, where we learn that he can offer McDonald’s fast food and booze at Noon in the rain- 

Now, I could argue that this whole situation is pretty silly..  Honestly, how would you react if you walked into a bar at noon and found your significant other sitting there awaiting her illicit tryst amongst the jukebox and sticky bar stools?  It just doesn’t seem that he’d say, oh it’s you.. and then they’d laugh (ha ha ha) and realize that they’ve just been the right people all along and only needed the newspapers skeezy ads to bring them back together--    To me, something is inherently wrong with this relationship that pina coladas, rain and dunes won’t solve.  But then again, this was the 70’s (ok, late 70’s but it still counts) where porno mustaches, polyester and astrological signs were prevalent, so I could be totally off on the point-    

But with this, life itself seemed to be a bit easier (granted I was all of about 6 when this song came out, but I can pretty much assure you that I had a way more carefree and wild childhood than my children will have, primarily by virtue of the fact that we know more now, we fear more now, we might be a bit more savvy now about predators and such, but boy, my childhood was FREE, and my kids will never feel that same amount of freedom no matter how hard I try—I mean, I am all for bike helmets and the accoutrements, but you and I all know that they’ll never heap 4 people on a big wheel while tearing down a driveway turning off into the brush and pricker bushes, laughing the entire way)

So now, put this in our time frame, it would never work.  He’d be cruising facebook or craigslist for babes.  He’d find a picture of his wife/girlfriend/mistresses’ face and/or body parts and they’d never get to the McDonald’s, booze, noon or rain stage.. game on.. right?   Statuses would be changed, internet chatter would explode, text messages buzzing like mad, pictures untagged and the wagons of your side versus my side would circle.  Maybe a lifetime movie with Meredith Baxter Birney and Leah Thompson would be filmed to portray the wrongs committed and how it’s her fault or his fault (depending on how the filmmaker wishes to go)—I could go on and on..

I love my internet, I love my computer and my ability to know what is going on with everyone’s lives at all times (I’ll admit it, can you?), but sometimes I wonder if it might be easier to just go back in time a bit.. I’ll accept the porno mustaches and astrological signs (I might have to fight you on the polyester, it just feels nasty), if it means that we’d all be carefree enough to laugh off blatant spousal infidelity (I am actually truly kidding on that one) in order to have little carefree and wild fun. 

I’ll bring the big wheel, you gather up the people…