Tunesday : You Never Can Tell

You Never Can Tell

Written and Performed by Chuck Berry

It was a teenage wedding, and the old folks wished them well
You could see that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle
And now the young monsieur and madame have rung the chapel bell,
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell
They furnished off an apartment with a two room Roebuck sale

The coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale,
But when Pierre found work, the little money comin' worked out well
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell
They had a hi-fi phono, boy, did they let it blast

Seven hundred little records, all rock, rhythm and jazz
But when the sun went down, the rapid tempo of the music fell
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell
They bought a souped-up jitney, 'twas a cherry red '53,

They drove it down to Orleans to celebrate the anniversary
It was there that Pierre was married to the lovely mademoiselle
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

This is one of those weeks where I have a short version and a long version of why I've picked the song I have, so here's the short version: That picture at the top is a screen shot of a video of me and Dave dancing at Oktoberfest last year. Kennedy took the video because she liked the way we were backlit by the crazy lights, and by coincidence, this was taken just minutes before someone from the club presented us with a prize for winning their dance contest; a contest we didn't even know they were running. Kennedy just showed me this video the other day and I thought I could use it on Facebook to mention our anniversary this week (some sweet blah blah about being married to Dave is like routinely winning the dance contest we never even knew we were competing in), and when Mallory saw the clip, she took it and added this song in the background -- a definite improvement over the fuzzy bar band that's in the actual clip -- and while Mal might think she was being playfully mocking by comparing her lame parents to Uma Thurman and John Travolta, you can probably tell from that picture that we are actually just that blithely focussed on each other when we're (drinking and) dancing; it's not an unfair comparison.

And the long story, what I was primarily reminded of this week: When Dave and I lived in Edmonton, the closest family (other than my brother Ken) was my Uncle Mike in Calgary. As my mother's youngest brother, Mike is only ten years older than I am, so while we might have been close if we had grown up around each other, I never actually saw him enough to really know him. I first met Mike's future wife, Carlene, when I was twelve and we went down to PEI for a visit, and immediately, she decided I was to be an ally of hers: Carlene brought me to a jewellery store to pick up the bracelet she had ordered for me (a silver ID bracelet with my name on the front and "from Mike and Carlene" on the back; I still have it in my jewellery box), and as no one had ever given me a piece of jewellery of any kind before, I was pretty easy to bribe into liking her (and especially because I was the only one to be given a special gift like this; they could have easily bought a similar bracelet for my cousin Shelly -- the only other niece and essentially my age -- but they didn't; I was the chosen one.)

Mike and Carlene got married and moved to Calgary, and not long after, my own family moved to Lethbridge (about two hours away). Even so, we only went up to visit them a handful of times; they didn't come down to see us much, either. It wasn't until I moved to Edmonton that Carlene would call me every now and then and invite me for a visit; and especially after Dave was in the picture.

The first time Dave met my grandparents was at Mike and Carlene's house. We had just gotten there, and I introduced Dave around, and my Pop said to him, "Would you like a beer?" When Dave grinned and said, "Sure", Pop replied, "Good. Get me one while you're up." We had such a good visit that time -- Dave got a kick out of my grandparents -- so it was doubly offputting to have Carlene try to enlist Dave into her inlaw-hating club. Because she did hate my grandparents; thought of them as low class and embarrassing (I guess her family would have been tacitly acknowledged as higher classed back home in Charlottetown, where it might have mattered to somebody). Dave refused to even humour Carlene, desperate as she was to create an us-vs-them vibe, and if anything, she forced herself outside our in-crowd of two.

And I suppose I should describe Carlene: She was probably the tiniest woman I've ever met, short and thin and jittery as a rabbit. I know I wrote before about when Mike first showed me the engagement ring he had bought for her and there was a misunderstanding when I said it was the smallest ring I had ever seen (he thought I was referring to the diamond, but it was the circumference of the ring itself that blew my mind) and I may have mentioned before that Carlene told me she found it really frustrating to try and find sexy clothes in her junior miss size (honestly, she was built like an eleven year old). She had hair just on the border between red and brown (which she was happy to point out a couple of times was easier to straighten than mine, even though I never tried to straighten mine), brown eyes, and more freckles than one usually sees on an adult. My Uncle Mike is about the easiest-going guy you can imagine -- Dave has always liked him just fine -- but Carlene was so high-strung, always yelling at him or bossing him around, and Mike would generally just chortle (he's a chortler) and ignore her.

Of course Mike and Carlene came out to Ontario for our wedding, and Carlene tried to give off the vibe that she was closer to us than any of my other relatives (which was probably true). They would invite us to come down and see them at Christmas or whenever, and after Kennedy was born, Carlene came up alone to meet her: I saw more of them in the six years I lived alone in Edmonton than I did over the seven years I lived in Lethbridge with my parents. It was on one trip to Calgary that they started telling me and Dave about this great movie they had gone to the night before, Pulp Fiction, and they pretty much acted out the scene with John Travolta giving Uma Thurman the adrenaline shot to the heart; which is what I picture every time I hear this song or think of that movie; hence the connection this week.

Now, I keep saying "Carlene was" because Carlene is no longer my aunt. For most of the time I knew her, Carlene worked at a bank while my uncle worked long hours at his small business. They never had kids of their own (because, as Carlene said to me while I was expecting Kennedy, she was terrified of the idea of birthing pain), and for the longest time, they were on an adoption waiting list. Near the end of their marriage, when Mike's business started doing really well, they decided that Carlene should work from home keeping the books (which was also supposed to help them transition into parenthood when their baby showed up), but when we were visiting once, Carlene said that working from home meant that all she wanted to do was smoke dope and play computer games all day (and the game she showed us that she was obsessed with was Larry the Lounge Lizard). And eventually, it came out that she was spending her days with some other man (apparently a spy with CSIS -- or at least that's what he told her -- so Ken and Dave mockingly referred to him as Austin Powers). And when Mike was willing to work on their marriage and maybe work less and commit to making a happy family with the baby that would have to come eventually, it then came out that Carlene had never actually done the final filing with Social Services: they were on no adoption waiting lists for all those years. Marriage over.

Mike and Carlene were the first divorce in our family (Carole and Eric would follow suit many years later), and despite them all not really getting along, this was painful for my good Catholic grandparents. My Uncle Mike hasn't married again, but he has been in a longtime relationship with another woman -- and Carole is large and friendly and quick to laugh; pretty much the opposite of my erstwhile aunty. And good for him. "C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.