An Email I Will Long Cherish

From a dear friend of mine -- the only person's whose Facebook friend request I ever accepted, and even that for only a week -- whom I met in our first job out of our respective colleges. We whiled away the hours, mostly second shift, proofreading airline timetables and lottery tickets. We became fast friends, enjoying music, the early Letterman years, Braves baseball, and a variety of other effects. In retrospect it is unreal to recall that we only worked together for eight months, because we bonded for life, although we don't communicate frequently. But my wife is a Facebook friend of his. . . .

My friend is fifty-eight years old and has a delightful six-year-old son, which informs the email I received today:

Hey.

Just wanted to tell you that the Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers live CD has grabbed a spot in Zachary's brain. We listened to it a good bit for a week or so after you sent it to me, and then a couple of times here and there. Yesterday, he was walking around muttering "dum de dum de dum dittle um day, oh New England!" and I just had to laugh. That's not even one of the songs we've played a lot. We were in a loop of playing "I'm a Little Airplane," "Ice Cream Man," "I'm a Little Dinosaur," and "My Little Kookenhaken."

So we had to play "New England" like 3 times on the way to school today.

You are one subversive motherfncker.