If you haven't heard the song it is about a man who finds out when he is a teenager that he is going to be a father. In the song he has a daughter, but for me it was a son. The song begins with the words, "All he could think about was 'I'm too young for this, got my whole life ahead, I'm just a kid myself, how'm I gonna raise one.'" That's about as far as I can get in the song before the tears well up. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm actually getting emotional just writing about this song, which is especially embarassing since I am in the public library.If you know me at all, you know that from there it only gets more autobiographical. "All he could see were his dream goin' up in smoke, so much for ditchin' this town and hangin' out on the coast. Oh well those plans are long gone. There goes my life, there goes my future, my everything.'" If you don't know me well, let me explain.
I have known what I wanted to be when I grew up since I was about thirteen. I wanted to be Jimmy Buffett. I guess you can blame my cousin/surrogate big sister Denise for playing me my first Buffett song and taking me to my first concert in 1989. I saw Jimmy Buffett in Nashville that night and then every summer in Nashville for the next decade, along with Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans. I was hooked from the beginning. That night after the concert I sat in her room all night reading his book of short stories, Tales From Margaritaville, about exotic locations and eccentric people. I knew from that moment that I had to leave this town and see the world. Also about this time my uncle/surrogate big brother Ryan was commissioned in the Air Force. My walls were covered in posters of figther jets, and I kept notebooks full of details about jets. I wanted to be an Air Force pilot. Naturally the two dreams melted together into one plan: I was going to be a pilot in the Caribbean, flying tourists from island to island. I spent the next four years pursuing this dream and then........I fell in love. Totally out of the blue, unexpected, didn't see it coming, blindsided, head over heels in love. A year later I learned I was going to be a father.
Back to the song. The second verse fast forwards a few years, "A couple years of up all night and a few thousand diapers later, that mistake he thought he made covers up the refrigerator, oh yeah, he loves that little girl (boy). There goes my life, my future, my everything." At this point in the song I am in full blown bawling. And then, Kenny kicks me while I'm down. "She had that Honda loaded down with Abercrombie clothes, fifteen pairs of shoes and his American Express. He checked the oil, slammed the hood, said 'You're good to go', she hugged them both and headed off to the West Coast. And he cried, there goes my life, there goes my future, my everything, I love you, baby goodbye. There goes my life." At this point I am officially sobbing.
I should not have written this in the library. People are beginning to stare. I better wrap this up. I love this song so much I hate it. I hate it because I can't even listen to it without being reduced to a big ole crybaby. That 18 year old boy whose world was turned upside down with the news he was going to be a daddy, now looks eye to eye with a soon to be 17 year old son who looks, acts, sounds and thinks just like his daddy. He'll be a senior in high school this fall, the same age I was when I met his momma and created him. I have never been more thankful that I didn't join the Air Force to fly planes or get to move to the Caribbean, because now I get to board planes with him and preach the Gospel side by side with him in the Caribbean. That's my life, and this is the life.
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