A blast from a (Suzanne Vega!) past

One thing I know
This pain will go
Step through all that's left to feel
Wait to meet my love, made real That's the start of the song "Birth Day (Love Made Real)" by Suzanne Vega on her "Nine Objects of Desire" album. This is a favorite of mine for a lot of reasons I won't go into (yet.)
 
You can hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw3CpkE9iXs
 
I suggested it a few (OK, maybe four or five) years ago when my older daughter had to choose a poem or song to deconstruct in front of her ?junior? senior? English class. The teacher, Mr. Zorn, was a favorite: a youngish track coach who played in a local bluegrass band and carried a golf club which he would swing hard (SWOOSH!) to make sure kids were listening.

They usually were.
Don't move, don't touch
Don't talk so much
Strip and find the place to kneel
Wait to meet my love, made real

Mr. Zorn's assignment instructions were quite specific: No profanity. No immoral or sexual content. (That was about it.)
 
I was inspired. I set my daughter on this song. We discussed it. She loved it. She wrote the required paper, took the CD to school and returned for my debriefing.
 
She was elated. She reported that when she'd handed out the lyrics and Suzanne Vega  began to sing, Mr.Zorn had gotten...tense.

Strap me down from wrist to heel
Wait to meet my love, made real
One thing I know
This day will go

OK, so this is where I admit  I was secretly delighting in upsetting Mr. Zorn as stand-in for English Teachers of the Past--and for kicks, whom I also remembered when he was a kid who square danced at the North Barton Grange twenty-five years before, back with my crowd when I was married to my daughter's father. Mr. Zorn, child of the Zorn farming clan, Men Without Fingers, as they'd seemed to have suffered more than their share of  digit-severing farm accidents...but I digress. 
 
Mr. Zorn listened and grew nervous as the kids snickered. As my daughter smiled serenely.
Don't touch don't talk crawl the wallShe's a ticket to the future, don't listen down the hall
You can say your prayer to the head of this bed
When it begins at your knees and goes right to your head
Birth-Day

Yes. Mr. Zorn broke a sweat. He twitched. He was ready to shut my daughter down, but the song came to its shuddering, presumably sex-and-drugs inspired closure.

Strap me down from wrist to heel
Wait to meet my love, made real
One thing I know
This day will go


Shakin' all over like an old sick dog
There's a needle here, needle there, tremble in the fog
It's a tight squeeze, vice grip, ice and fire
Hot little treasure and the wave goes higher
Birth-Day
Birth-Day

Mr. Zorn said, "So...what was that about?" Cringing. Shaking his head.

And my daughter said, "That was about...labor and delivery of a baby. "

Oh yes. Such a cool song.

And Mr.Zorn held up his hands while the class hooted. Later, my daughter's paper read, "You got me! A+!"

So,I give you Suzanne Vega and the hallucinogenic drug-trip of having a baby as celebrated by my daughter's clever shock-the-favorite-teacher presentation, stirred up tonight by word association and my need to listen to this song on YouTube. The inter-web is a marvelous thing.