Your Song

Sting, master lutist and former lead singer of The Police, likes to tell a story about how people will occasionally gush at him about how much they love his song "Every Breath You Take" and how it meant so much to them that they played it at their wedding. "All I could say to them was, 'Good luck then.'"
Mister Sting's standard arrogance aside, it is a kind of creepy song to play at the union of two healthy and sane individuals: Every single day, Every word you say,Every game you play,Every night you stay,Ill be watching you." Much in the same way that Charlie Brown may have gazed longingly at that little red-headed girl just a little too long, there is a line between love and obsession, sweetness and stalking.
I was introduced to the concept of couples having a song by my high school sweetheart. It was her belief that "our song" was the one that we heard at that moment she and I became we. By that measure, I was fairly certain that "our song" was the news on Q103. As the days turned to months and finally years, we renegotiated several times, trying to find a tune that adequately summed up our feelings for one another, but remained just this side of sappy. I filled dozens of ninety minute cassettes attempting to create just the right tone. Songs by Jimmy Buffett, Led Zeppelin, and Dire Straits all had their rotation, but none of them seemed to stick. Consequently, there is a good deal of music that causes me to reflect on that time, even now.
Lugging around that kind of musical legacy made it a bit of a challenge to find a song for my wife and I. She had a vision of having our first dance at our wedding to Etta James singing, "At Last." In a lovely bit of spontaneity, my older brother hijacked the boom box and played Ren and Stimpy's "Happy Happy, Joy Joy" in its place. He got it exactly right.