Love Songs

One day while helping a friend move, I remarked that I should have brought a radio to fill the silence. One of the young movers heard me and very kindly offered to play his cellphone/ipod music for us. I must have made a face because he instantly assured me that it contained nothing but love songs. We accepted his offer.
After he set it up, he must of realized that some of the songs might not be appropriate for two grandmothers. He showed me how to press the skip button and left. He was obviously happy to be sharing. We felt honored by his thoughtfulness.
Then the music began to play. We weren’t stupid enough to expect Barry Manilow but we sure were not prepared for what did play. I listen to today’s soft rock and know many of the current hits. I didn’t know any of these. We realized quickly that what he sincerely considered “love songs”, we would have termed “sex songs”. We found ourselves in a dilemma. He was popping in and out of the house as he packed and carried. We didn’t want to hurt his feelings by turning it off or by skipping all of them. Since I was nearest to the phone it was left to me to skip the worst ones and let the others play.
My choosing criteria came down to bad words. Those with swear words got skipped. Let me tell you, I received an education in how many ways you can describe “the deed” without using swear words. There were a few songs that had us huddled in the corner of the room giggling like school girls as we tried to make out if they were saying what we thought they were saying!
The only one I can remember had a chorus that kept telling us that “everyone in the building knows my name”. Apparently, if we understood correctly, his girlfriend called it out frequently during…… well, you get the idea.
The next day he had it all set up when we arrived. Again, I became the censor board. This day we had another friend helping for awhile. She was our bishop’s wife. We didn’t think much about it until she was getting ready to leave. She softly asked my friend if the music was hers or the movers. I know she couldn’t understand why we were letting it play but she hadn’t seen how pleased this young man had been to share his music.
The value of being introduced to a new form of music- iffy. The value of making a young man’s day and bridging the generation gap- priceless. That’s the view from my side of the street, what’s yours?