My Favorite Things: a Clarification
775 words. Commentary.
My Favorite Things: a Clarification
If you’re like me, you take your marching orders from pop culture. I used to have one long bucket list, but now I manage many such lists, each one derived from a single source and therefore focused on one or just a few types of activity. And so, for instance, I have among my to-do lists one based on Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” (not that I expect to ever need that one, locked as I am for all eternity in the most blissful of marriages). It’s just really handy to not have to come up with my own plans.
The one thing I need to clarify may not look like a to-do list, until you realize that “liking” things is actually an activity. And so we come to the song “My Favorite Things” from the musical “The Sound of Music.” I had made a list of things to try to like, based on that song, and the other day I had time on my hands so I set about trying to like each thing. I don’t mean I wanted to like them in a theoretical sense, such as by finding a picture online and declaring, “Hey, I like it!” I wanted to like each thing, in person.
Now, it would be quite expensive to actually go out and buy each thing on the list. But the song speaks only of favoring things, not owning them. And so, for instance, I was able to like a copper kettle (many copper kettles, in fact) just by going down to Bed, Bath and Beyond. As I stood before the display of shiny metal and stared at it, and heard it clonging like heavy wind chimes as other shoppers walked by, I found that I genuinely liked these copper kettles. And so I checked it off the list and moved on to the next item.
It went on like this in enjoyable fashion for several days, but then I hit a serious snag. I did not enjoy the dog bite. I tried—I really, really tried. I went to the animal shelter and volunteered to help socialize their most vicious dog. I expected to be ushered into a cage with a glowering pit bull, but instead they put me in with Senor Fluffola, a whimsically-named and cute Chihuahua. But oh, the anger behind those beady little eyes. As he charged toward me, I, trusting my list of favorite things, rolled up my sleeves and knelt to receive his delightful (according to Messrs. Rodgers and Hammerstein) bites.
It only took three bites for me to conclude that, unlike copper kettles and whiskers on kittens (which I had liked on an earlier visit to the same shelter), I probably would never actually like dog bites. As they bandaged my wounds and recommended a rabies test, the attendants asked me why I had just knelt there while Senor Fluffola had his way with me. I explained about my list.
It was then that they helpfully clarified the lyrics to the song, and that is the key information I want to pass on to you: you must listen to the song very, very carefully. It seems that the dog bite, the bee sting, and the sad feelings are not included on the list of favorite things. They are things the songwriter does not like. Contemplation of the favorite things is what he proposes one should do when experiencing the not-favorite things. I chalk this misunderstanding up to the fact that I went into a sort of trance when I was transcribing my list while listening to the song in real time. When in that mode, I tend to focus on the nouns and not so much on the verbs and the possibly complex grammar that springs up without warning.
Now, having had the dog bites, I would take the advice from the song a step further: if a dog is biting you, and you have an avenue for escape, do not just sit there simply remembering raindrops on roses and apple strudel. Instead, you should, in the words of the Amy Winehouse song, Help Yourself. That is, run.
I was very glad to learn this, though I wish I had learned it by trying to like feeling sad or being stung by a bee instead of by being bitten by Senor Fluffola, but I was going in the order as listed in the song.
As painful as it was, this experience did allow me to cross an item from another of my lists, this one taken from the Joe Public song: Live and Learn.
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