One Hand in My Pocket and the Other on my Credit Card.

I want it noted that I will be purchasing Alanis Morissette�s unplugged version of Jagged Little Pill despite the fact that originally it will be sold exclusively via Starbucks stores. Why, you will ask, I know you will. So I will tell you. I personally don�t care that as artists get older they get somewhat wise to the fact that they have to make money and provide for their future existence, and going slightly commercial via Starbucks, and *cough*, ( I have a hard time with this one), Gap commercials does not bother me much. People get older, they change, and the angst they once felt goes away, or at least fades into the distance as they learn to deal with and overcome their past and get on with it; at least I hope so. It seems to happen to everyone, or at least a large number of the adult population eventually. I was only maybe ten when this CD came out however it was around for quite a long time, and I remember purchasing it in maybe eighth or ninth grade. I remember the day clearly, and this may be part of the reason I am going to purchase the acoustic version ,this, and face it despite the whining, the angst , the anger, and the bile it is a damn good CD. Most guys despise it when they really listen to the lyrics but that very fact adds to the charm of it in a way. Don�t you agree? I digress so let us proceed. So there I was, age thirteen or fourteen, fresh from some music store or another at the mall with three friends in tow, another girl and two guys sitting in the back of my mothers Volvo Station Wagon (get the picture). I show my mother what I had purchased, and she, having heard Alanis on the radio, pops it into the CD player. We are driving along merrily chit chatting, all singing. I am not sure if I knew the words or had ever heard the non-edited version of the CD at least that I can remember. Somewhere at about �would she go down on you in a theatre� my mother�s hands tightened on the steering wheel and I see her looking at me out of the corner of my eye. Nothing yet though, all is calm, but then, god of course, it had to happen the dreaded words �Are you thinking of me when you fuck her�. Well that did it. She looks at me and said directly to me, in a rather loud voice for her as she tends to be very soft spoken,� have you heard these lyrics before�, or� did you hear those words� ,or something like that to which I replied �no�. I am not sure if this was true or not but I really wanted to hear them now in full, without her sitting there yelling and my friends in the back trying to disappear into the crack of the seat. She then turns around to my friends in the back seat, yea no mercy on me here or on them for that matter, and she asks them if they had ever heard those lyrics before, as if they were somehow guilty by the mere fact that up until that point they had been sitting merrily in the back singing the words. They of course purported to not know or had never really listened to or never really heard the lyrics. Of course they are all sitting there in semi shock as my mother is semi freaking out, and they all say they never pay attention to the lyrics (this may indeed have been the case to be honest but as with me you can be sure they wanted to hear them now). Simultaneous to all of this she is taking out the CD and telling me to pack it up we are going to bring it back. So she drops all my friends off at their respective homes, they get out of the car, not looking her in the eye, and with very serious �we are good kids and are shocked and bothered by this� looks on their faces they all wander off into their respective abodes. My mother then drags me back to the mall and the music store where I had purchased the CD. She brings it to the counter and tells the guy she wants to return it, he says� no it is open and used�. Well, this ticks her off because she is still in a mini fury over the fact that there were such words with all their connotations on a CD that her daughter had access to. She looks at the guy and says "this is a CD that should not be sold to children this age�. The man, he was probably all of twenty at the most, said something to the affect of �there is no rating system here and the CD can be purchased and it was and it can�t be returned�. She then says to the guy in a rather loud voice "have you listened to the words on this CD? They are disgusting". He really didn�t say too much in response to that, turned sort of red; he was obviously getting embarrassed but still almost appeared to be laughing. I was just afraid my mother was going to start singing the lyrics or something n front of the whole of Sam Goody or whatever the place was at the time. He just looks at her as she says again �those words should not be purchased by children this age and you are going to take this back�. He did of course more to shut her up than anything else I am sure, but the whole process was quite humiliating. We then left after she had a few more words with the manager and he suggested she have me purchase CD�S at Wal-Mart from now on because they would be edited. This, to women who had never set foot in one in her life right; she then tells me I am never to purchase music there again and she is gong to go through my CD collection when we get home. There was, I am sure, more that occurred subsequent to this but that is the meat of it. One lesson: never to play a new CD in parent�s car. We live we learn. That is however one of the reasons why this CD sticks in my mind and why I will purchase the acoustic version next week. That and well, (listening to the original version right now, as of course I did purchase the CD again, sometime later maybe at a more appropriate age of say sixteen or something, and still have it on my media player), as I listen to it I sometime wish that I could actually care about someone enough so that I would feel some of that angst and agony when they left. I mean I am not saying that it would feel good but I imagine the passion/love that would come before would have to be significant, to provoke the writing of such songs. As of this writing the leaving has always been the least painful part of the whole process for me. I want it the other way. Afterall: You love you learn You cry you learn You lose you learn You bleed you learn You scream you learn Right????