Looking for Clues
Written and Performed by Robert Palmer
It's crazy but I'm frightened
By the sound of the telephone, oh yeah
I'm worried that the caller
Might have awful news, oh my
Who knows these days
Where on earth the money goes, oh yeah
No doubt we could put it
To a better use, oh my
You keep insisting that nobody showed you
How to keep relationships, oh yeah
Your daddy made
A real good try, oh my
You said you knew all along
We could work it out, oh yeah
Do you have to make a fuss everytime we fly
Oh, I'm looking for clues
I have to make an effort now
I just to be serious, oh yeah
Nobodys gonna give you
The benefit of the doubt, oh my
Everytime I pick a paper up
It's harder to believe the news, oh yeah
I'm gonna have to shake it up
And twist and shout, oh my
You can't do nothing
That you don't put your mind to, oh yeah
I suspected all along
You were a dream come true, oh my
I'm never in the dark
'Cause my heart keeps me well informed, oh yeah
I'm convinced that there's a way
Of getting through to you
Ooh, I'm looking for clues
It's crazy but I'm frightened
By the sound of relationships, oh yeah
I swear we could
Put it to a better use, oh my
Do hurry baby, you've forgotten
How to catch a night groove, oh yeah
You told all the callers you were not amused
Ooh, I'm looking for clues
You keep insisting that nobody showed you
How to use a telephone, oh yeah
Nobody's gonna give you
A second chance, oh my
I don't have to make an effort now
To find out where the money goes, oh yeah
Do you have to make a fuss every time we dance
Ooh, I'm looking for clues
Ooh, I'm looking for clues
Ooh, I'm looking for clues
Ooh, I'm looking for clues
After writing about Robert Palmer and The New Music last week, I've been thinking about my childhood friend Terri-Anne and want to write about her this week. And for all the reasons I mentioned then, Looking for Clues is another song that has all the same positive associations.
The thing about moving to another province and another school and looking for new friends is that the only kids who don't already have longtime friendships tend to be oddballs. This was made worse for me when we moved to Ontario in the middle of grade 3 because by Christmas, all the kids seemed to be in firm cliques with no room for the girl with the funny East Coast accent who appeared, like an alien, out of nowhere. Happily for me, Terri-Anne didn't have any good friends, and when she offered friendship to me, I jumped.
Terri-Anne was an oddball, I guess. She was tall and kind of chubby (more solid than fat) and she had long, straight, mousy hair and a ton of freckles. Most importantly, she was an only child, and as a beloved only child, she was an excellent student with a lot of self-confidence. Her mother was from Italy -- and she liked to stress it as Northern Italy (which was supposed to explain her blonde hair, but I suspect it was dyed) -- and she also had a lot of self-confidence, which some might misinterpret as a superior or condescending attitude, but I think it was simply a European flair; think Sophia Loren. Terri-Anne's father owned the local radiator repair shop, and he was a quiet man who enjoyed hunting and had hounds in a backyard kennel.
They lived out in the country and on their acreage kept a large garden and chickens (for eggs and meat, but Terri-Anne refused to eat a chicken she knew). Their huge bungalow was beautifully Italiante with a covered and tiled interior courtyard leading up the front door. They had a piano, which Terri-Anne taught me to play simple songs on for talent shows for her parents, and they were the only family I ever knew with a first generation Atari system, which really didn't interest us at all (Pong, anyone? I didn't think so.).
Because she lived so far away from me, hanging out with Terri-Anne on a weekend meant a sleepover, but she was pretty much never allowed to sleep at my house. Terri-Anne said it was because, as an only child, her mother would "miss her too much", and while that might have some truth to it, it was probably more likely that her parents thought mine were low class; which is kind of funny, since my father wore a suit and tie to work every day while Terri-Anne's wore coveralls, and every time we walked into his shop, he'd be hammering on a radiator or spray painting a whole rack of them black. (I was just wondering if that shop could possibly still be operating -- because do people even get things repaired any more? -- and there it was online, renamed, but stating, "We've been in business for 43 years, passing proprietorship down from one generation of our family to the other." (I can't imagine Terri-Anne in coveralls, but I'm intrigued by the mental image.)
And there was obviously a class vibe happening between our parents. One day when I asked my Mum if I could go to Terri-Anne's, she exploded, "You know, having money doesn't make them happier than we are, Krista. I could tell you some stories that that woman has said to me..." And another time, when Mum was looking at my class picture, she pointed at Terri-Anne's expensive outfit and said, "Now, who would buy a growing kid those Italian leather boots? It's just a waste, I tell you." Even at the time I thought that Terri-Anne had probably borrowed her mother's boots, but I don't think I said anything, simply stunned by the vitriol.
I remember Terri-Anne's parents as being very kind to me. Her mother would always put out make-your-own sandwich fixings for lunch (with Italian bread, deli meats and cheeses), and there was always a salad of mixed greens with an oil and vinegar dressing, a carafe of homemade wine for the adults. Dinners were generally pasta; breakfast: Nutella on toast. I remember driving to the flea market with them once, and Terri-Anne's mother was wearing a T-shirt that at one time had a mood-ring type colour-changing decal on it, but by this time it had fallen off, and all this t-shirt had was the words, "I'm in the Mood". As we walked around, more than one man said to her, "Oooh, I'm in the mood too, baby", and she couldn't understand why. (At around this same time, my Mum had a T-shirt that said, "Voulez-vous couchez avec moi? ~ Labelle", and I have no idea if strange men reacted to it or not, but I assume she knew what the lyrics meant...) I remember driving with her mother, and as she looked at a road sign, she said, "Whenever I see a 'soft shoulders' sign, I think, 'soft shoulders and willing arms'." So European! I remember going with Terri-Anne's family into Toronto around Halloween one year to visit relatives, and after a dinner of strange-tasting, spicy soup and way too much candy, I barfed all over myself and their car on the long, hot drive home. Her mother was very understanding about cleaning up the mess and washing my clothes for me.
I remember that Terri-Anne's father was always happy to see us if we walked over to his shop from school at lunch, as we sometimes did. A few times, he took us downtown for subs (which was a huge deal to me), but most often we were just saying hi on our way to the restaurant at the plaza. Quite a few times, I would blow my whole allowance ($3) on a banquet burger with fries and a coke, and it was unbelievable to me to be eating in a sit-down restaurant with Terri-Anne -- I don't think my parents ever took us to that restaurant, and rarely took us out to eat at all.
One of the best parts of going to Terri-Anne's house was that their property abutted a conservation area, and we could go for long walks on the forest paths there. When winter came, I would borrow her old cross-country skis and we would ski the trails. That winter (probably grade 5), I asked for cross-country skis of my own for Christmas, and for the first time ever, I got what I asked for (and maybe my parents were just feeling the pressure of keeping up with the rich folks, but I loved the skis). Unfortunately, at around that same time, I was branching out to other friends, and by that summer, Terri-Anne and I were no longer talking.
I don't even remember what we fought about, but I do remember her getting on the school bus (on the last day of grade 5?) and her saying, "Well, you're not my friend any more." And I quipped back, "Yeah, well, you never really were my friend in the first place. And I better get my skis back." Some other girl from our grade was getting on the bus, and hearing me diss the oddball girl (still tall and solid, still a high-achieving honour student two years later), this popular girl said to me, "Good one, Krista." That made me feel equally proud and ashamed, and when her father dropped my skis off at my house a few days later, I knew we would never be friends again.
Why do girls do that? Why did I do that? At first, Terri-Anne saved me from loneliness, and I ended up dismissing her -- I don't know if she ever had another best friend in elementary school (I was too frigid to keep track) but as I moved on to my best-friendship with Cora, I know I never skied again.
Skip ahead a few years: my family was uprooted again, and after negotiating the lonely waters of trying to find a new clique in grade 10, my three best friends from Ontario -- Cora, Laurie, and Andrea -- came out to Alberta to visit me the next summer. The four of us were out one day, and when we got home, my Mum said, "You're never going to guess who called while you were out. Terri-Anne. Apparently, she has some family out here that they're visiting and she wanted to drop in on you. Can you imagine?"
"And what did you tell her?"
"I told her that you were busy and that you'd be too busy the whole time she's here for you to see her."
Mum looked really proud of that, but I was astonished: I had had such a lonely year, and even though I had found my group of friends by then, I was feeling a lot of empathy for Terri-Anne and queasiness for how I had cut her off; and if she was big enough to bury the hatchet and offer me an olive branch (and other mixed metaphors), I couldn't believe how petty my Mum had been to brush her off. I couldn't believe that's what Mum would have thought I wanted.
Funny how my Mum was always the third person
in my friendship with Terri-Anne, oh yeah
I guess she was using it to work out
her own issues, oh my
Ooh, I'm looking for clues...
This is the only picture I have of the two of us, with Kyler in the middle:
