Good Kid:  “Mom, can I listen to this song?”

Mom:  “What is it?”

Good Kid:  “I Once Was Seven Years Old.”

Mom:  “Sounds okay.”

If mom has time to check she will see that it is purportedly a story of a kid from a poor home who grew up to be a wonderful sixty year old grand-daddy or something like that.  Oh, how wonderful.  It’s hogwash!  No seven to eleven year old listens to this to see how to become a good sixty year old, a loving grandfather, I presume.  At least he has kids by his “woman.”   I repeat – no child listens to that song with the end of life in view!

Kids are not going to listen with the goal of being sixty.  A seven year old listens for what a seven and eleven year old kid does – the rest is blown in the wind.  If that were the intent why is the song not called “I’m Now Sixty Years Old” and sold to adults as a pointer on how to be the parent of a seven year old.  What garbage!

What does this song say to the seven year old?   “Go make yourself some friends, or you will be lonely.”

So what did we do?  We pushed each to the limits of the big, big world.

By eleven how did we act?  We were smoking herbs, (that’s pot, I presume) and  drinking burning liquor. We never really got rich but we were making “that steady figure.”

(Wonder how they did that.   Selling drugs and body, maybe?)

And daddy says, “Go get a wife…”

Well, just continue the lyrics, you’ll find a rollicking song writer, etc, by sixty, he is happy.  He has a lot of kids to come visit him.

As of a year ago this piece of “good advice” had sold 10.4 million copies, won three Grammy Awards, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Pop….