Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows

I had been invited into the parlor.

Not by a spider but by a vivacious young woman named Robin.

We were involved in a romantic triangle, I was the interloper. We didn’t talk about that situation too much. I don’t think she was a coquette, she just liked the attention and conversation. Her early life (prior to our meeting nine months earlier) had been something of a mystery to me, it was not spoken of, but on this day she was eager to talk about a formative episode in her teen years.

We were standing before the spinet piano where she had taken lessons in her early teens. She related a story about her piano teacher, an older teen boy who took advantage of their proximity on the piano bench to indulge in some light touching, running his fingers through her hair. Creepy, perhaps, but nothing exactly criminal. And she enjoyed it, immensely (“I came and came…”) Her musical ambitions faded after that, or perhaps because of that, but now that she was older she still did enjoy current pop music, especially Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love.

On this day, however, she rather shyly brought out her favorite album of her teen years, and played me her favorite song:



Whew! That was a far cry from Led Zep. Lesley Gore was a great singer, Marvin Hamlisch wrote the song, and Quincy Jones was the producer, all of them superstars (of a different sort.) Looking back on it now, I think that that particular song may have been her adolescent mantra: the way to live life, harsh realities be damned. And the good times we had together, those times when she lifted me out of my pit of teen-angst, truly were sunshine, lollipops and rainbows.