Yellow Submarine
(Lennon-McCartney) Performed by The Beatles
In the town where I was born,
Lived a man who sailed to sea,
And he told us of his life,
In the land of submarines.
So we sailed on to the sun,
Till we found a sea of green,
And we lived beneath the waves,
In our yellow submarine.
We all live in a yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
We all live in a yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
And our friends are all aboard,
Many more of them live next door,
And the band begins to play...
We all live in a yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
We all live in a yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
Full speed ahead, Mr Boatswain, full speed ahead
Full speed ahead it is, Sgt.
Cut the cable, drop the cable,
Aye, aye, sir, aye, aye
Captain, captain
As we live a life of ease (life of ease)
Every one of us has all we need
(Every one of us has all we need)
Sky of blue and sea of green
(Sky of blue, sea of green)
In our yellow submarine
(In our yellow submarine, aha)
We all live in a yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
We all live in a yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
We all live in a yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
We all live in a yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
I understand that this is probably the stupidest Beatles song and I'm including it not because I like it, but because of my stupid story about it.
When Cora and I would hang out at her house, we would often listen to a Sunday evening all-Beatles radio show (I think it came out of Niagara Falls). It was a request show and one week we decided to see if we could get on the air. We snuck into her brother Paul's room -- who, because he paid for it himself, had his own phone -- and we called and called until we got through. When the DJ finally answered, Cora thrust the phone at me alone and I was flustered as he asked me questions about how young I was (probably 13) and how long I had been a Beatles fan, etc. When he finally got around to asking me what my request was, I totally blanked. Cora and I hadn't discussed what song we were going to request -- we were probably too dazzled by the idea of being on the radio to believe we would ever actually get through -- and although I racked my brain for my favourite song, in the end, I panicked and blurted out Yellow Submarine.
Were the listeners at home charmed by my young age or disappointed by my choice? Who would turn up the radio and start snapping their fingers when Yellow Submarine comes on the radio? Cora and I spent the rest of the evening working out which song I should have requested -- I think we settled on Hey Bulldog as an awesome and unexpected choice -- and Cora got a lot of mileage out of mocking me for that evening. "Remember the time when you were too shy to think of a Beatles song?" And this from someone who was too shy to even talk. Harrumph.
So, a few weeks later, I was at Cora's when her brother Paul came flying down the stairs with his phone bill in his hands, and in front of their parents, asked us what we had been doing in his room and why we thought we could make a long distance call on his phone, yadda yadda. He had called the operator to find out what the unknown charge was on his bill, so he knew someone had called that radio station and he had correctly detectived that it was the two of us. And even though it would have only been a couple dollars, back in those days, making a long distance call was a weighty decision: there were no flat rate bills, no free calls after 6 pm, you simply didn't call someone unless it was important. Paul was so mad -- over an experience that I was already ashamed about -- and although Cora's parents said that they would pay it if we promised to stay out of Paul's room, it felt like just one more reason for Paul not to like me; for Cora's parents to wonder if I was the bad influence here.
And now, whenever I hear Yellow Submarine, I think of that all-Beatles request show, and my struggle between wanting to be taken seriously by adults on the one hand and me blurting out the most childish song title on the other, and the phone bill that caused so much righteous anger, and the judgmental look on Cora's parents' faces -- there's just so much negativity surrounding a song I never liked in the first place and there's this feeling of injustice, like I had somehow been scapegoated even though everything I did was of my own free will. And although this might not seem like a fascinating story, something about this experience captures the kernel of what my years in Stouffville felt like to me: misunderstandings and powerlessness and my inability to ever show people that I'm not as big a dork as I seem. Though at some point, I'll probably need to face the fact that I totally was as big a dork as I seemed.
