American Girl and Sweet Child O’ Mine. Just wondering on those two.

 

American Girl or Sweet Child O’ Mine?

 

Okay. If you were born anytime after 1990, you might as well stop reading now.

 

 

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Yesterday, I heard American Girl on the radio.

Backstory if you were born after 1990 and decided to read anyway. American Girl is a song by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released in 1977.

Upon hearing the best song ever in my car, I decided to dig my CD out of the attic.

Admittedly, I forget American Girl is the best song ever until I hear it. But when I hear it, I must hear it again, and again and again.

I mentioned this to my husband. Who thought I needed therapy because I said American Girl was the best song ever.

“Everyone knows the best song ever is Sweet Child O’ Mine.”

 

 

I took exception to his statement because I consider myself included in this subset of everyone and I know American Girl is the best song ever.

I played American Girl for my husband. He looked at me like he’d married a stranger. Of course that might have something to do with the dancing moment I tried have in the kitchen. Which became needlessly ruined and awkward because someone didn’t appreciate my zen movement.

 

* *  *

After a night’s rest, I thought on this conundrum for 20 miles on my bike this morning.

Who is this American Girl?

Who is the Sweet Child O’ Mine?

This is not a deep dissection of the lyrics. It’s more why does one girl, one woman-to-be, captivate me and the other not so much.

 

“She’s got a smile it seems to me

Reminds me of childhood memories

Where everything

Was as fresh as the bright blue sky.”

 

 

A killer melody, lead vocal and best guitar riff ever – there is a definite sweet sadness to his sentiments.

A longing for this young, beautiful girl and the place her memory takes him.

Then there’s  . . .

 

“Well, she was an American girl

Raised on promises

She couldn’t help thinkin’

That there was a little more to life somewhere else

After all it was a great big world

With lots of places to run to.”

 

Tom Petty has said that he was not writing about a UF student who tragically took her life by jumping off of Beaty Towers in the 1960s.

I had never heard that sad story, but I always saw the American Girl.

Driving in a car with the windows down. Sitting in her house or apartment staring out the window. Some guy drifted into her life. An involvement lying on the couch or the bed. Lying around in her past, taking up space in her today and a weight pulling down her future.

I see the American Girl later in life, bent over a sink full of dirty dishes. Starting (or finishing) her day communing with the 10th load of laundry.

The grown up American Girl stopped wondering about the great big world with lots of places to run to. Instead she calls in refills for Zoloft, and crams what might have been under the stack of towels she just folded.

Did she graduate high school? Go to college?

Does she still wonder about finding meaning in life somewhere else?

That’s when it came to me — about mile 14 on the ride — maybe Sweet Child O’ Mine and American Girl are the same?

Sweet Child lives forever unchanged in the memory of a man fixated on her perfect smile, blue eyes and nary a bad hair day.

The American Girl was once the Sweet Child. Not bound in someone’s memory, the American Girl developed wrinkles and weariness around her eyes. She had children too early or maybe she waited too late and children never came. Maybe she didn’t want children but ended up raising her sister’s child.

The American Girl liked to draw. She designed spaces in her mind as a Sweet Child.

There was one guy, one man who loved all of her, both the Sweet Child and American Girl.

But one night, after a bad day and too much cheap tequila, American Girl met the lump on the couch and made the wrong choice.

After that, there never seemed to be any money left over at the end of the month to start taking some college courses. Though American Girl still mapped out living spaces in her head while folding laundry. She couldn’t help it.

Who’s to know, but supposing about it all helped pass time on the ride.

Besides,

It’s has great beat and easy to dance to.

Thoughts?