The Damage Done?

The core six of us spent the last week in California. Maybe it's what some of us see as the slower/more relaxed pace, but we found time to reflection. (Core six are: Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.) There was a great deal of reflecting this week. Saturday night, while discussing a week where a number of us turned to music (Mike, Cedric, Betty and Kat included), one memory stood out.

Neil Young's song "The Needle & the Damage Done" is a song about a number of things including drug use. That's obvious when you're an adult. ("I sing the song because I love the man/ I know that some of you don't understand . . .") But when you're a kid?

One of us can remember being five-years-old and loving the song, strumming his plastic guitar along and pretending he could play the song. But what he associates with the song the most is an explosion at his house. His father was very angry, yelling, pacing and finally punching a hole in the kitchen wall.

As the young boy retreated his room, he listened to this song over and, when he thought/hoped all was calm, went into the kitchen to perform the song hoping this would help or calm down his father.

It's strange the things you associate with music. (Betty wrote about her own associations on Friday.) But what we found interesting was how many of us had similar memories.

The father wasn't abusive (we have permission to name the father and he's said we could explain the details of the event but we're taking a pass online -- print readers won't be left guessing). He was very upset (not at anyone in the house including his wife) over a disappointing outcome for someone else. In varying degrees, we could all see ourselves responding in similar ways (and many of us have).

But that moment is so embedded to this day when one of us hears "The Needle & The Damage Done" (and, again, almost all of us can think of similar moments). When you're that small and every grown up is a GIANT, when you don't know what's going on, you just know that your parents are in a room together and one of them is exploding and smashing things, it can be really scary. Even if your mother isn't the target (and she wasn't in the story above), you can be frightened for her as much as for yourself.

This isn't a PSA. We don't have a tidy little moral or any suggestions for anyone.

We're not recommending that any parent try to keep their anger out of sight of their children. (Two of us who had parents who did that and think they were successful in hiding it. They weren't.) We're just wondering what the effects are from those moments?

That was the first (and only) time one of us ever saw his father that upset. But for years after, if his father was upset, he'd fear how upset his father might get. If he screwed up, as every kid does, he'd be more scared of his father's reaction than anything else.

His parents like Neil Young's music (we are aware that it's down to one of three males participating in the writing of this edition, online readers can guess away) and he grew up with it. The song was a happy song to him up until that moment. Then it became an "aftermath" song. ("Not in the Rolling Stone sense," Kat clarifies.) So we're just tossing that out there this week. We have a lot of readers who are young parents and maybe they can make something of it that will benefit their own lives? Or maybe non-parents will reflect on a song's association for them?