posted
I was thinking about Jessica's topic on movies that make you cry...and there are tons of songs that make me cry...more so when I was younger than now...I use to bawl my head off over the song "Everything I Own" by Bread.
But...when I was little... the song...Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter, Paul and Mary made me so sad...I just was so bummed out when Jackie Paper didn't go see Puff anymore in the song..I was devastated....I am pretty sure this song might even be from the 60's....but does anyone else even remember it??
I use to love alot of Peter, Paul and Mary's music.
Here's the lines from the song that bummed me out:
A dragon lives forever but not so little boys Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys. One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.
It is a bummer that all kids grow up....that's the sad part. They out grow having an imagination.
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posted
You do realize that Puff the Magic Dragon was a metaphor for smokin dope don't you?
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posted
That is false about the dope smoking metaphor....cause I just looked it up...it is true that people try and say that...but "Peter" (the guy that wrote it) said this:
"Puff, The Magic Dragon," the song that folk singers loved to hate, and that generations of children would just love, was conceived by a friend of Yarrow's in late 1958. "It was in my senior year, during finals, before the winter break, that the basis of the song was typed out on a sheet written by Leonard Lipton, who was kind of my little brother in a fraternity-to-end-all- fraternities kind of a concept," Yarrow said. "I guess we were all lonely, and yet we didn't like the idea of fraternities, and so this was one of those fraternities of so-called losers. Of course, in the light of today that all looks rather ludicrous, though at the time it was a pretty rugged social system at Cornell and, really, in the United States. Sensibilities were very much of the '50s. The '60s had not yet brought another view of the way people might think of fairness, justice, sensitivity to one another, whatever.
"I took that and worked on it and added more than half again the lyrics that had been written and put a melody to it. Indeed, I've recovered the first scrap of paper and my notes on it. So, I've been able to say, 'Oh, I wrote that line.' What I brought to it really was the sense, as opposed to the adventure story, of the idea of the loss of innocence, when I wrote, 'A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys,' at the time. Now, I sing, 'girls and boys.' The idea was that this was a song that really had a sense of tragic, if you will, implications, like some of the great mythical stories.
As we reach that point of growing up, it's at best a sad sweetness when we emerge as adults because we have to leave childish things, dragons, behind.
"Now, implicit in that story is the possibility that as adults we might find another way to confirm something analogous to innocence, and, indeed, I do believe that folk music in general and idealism and belief in possibility--as opposed to the mean-spiritedness that seems to be grasping this nation in such a frightening way--that other hopeful point of view and the desire to continue to work toward an ideal, is for me a continuation of innocence. But that isn't really indicated in the song, it's just my own feeling." (And you thought it was just a children's song.)
So no marijuana or Vietnam war weapons are mentioned. Damn, another childhood memory shattered.
_____________________________________________
Now I like it even more...cause I love what I just read about why he wrote the song...and what it means is what it says...it is sad...that childhood is such a brief time period in your life, and then it's gone.....
I keep looking at my son everyday...and looking at how much he is changing and growing up...and I don't like it at all....and it is something you can't stop.....
I think back all the time about my childhood...and here's my son's shortening up every day....it is a bummer.
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posted
Isis, I just said to my wife last night that I don't want our first set of twins to grow up so I know what you are going through. They just turned 3, started school, and are starting to be more independent. I could write a novel on here the way I am feeling about it right now but I don't want to bore anyone so on the topic of Puff, I used to cry when I heard the song also because of exactly the lines you wrote. I never know about the smoking dope stuff until I was a teenage but by then it did't really matter.
They made a cartoon out of it that I believe my sister still has. I could check with her & put it on DVD for you if you wanted a copy.
Bob
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posted
Three of them, in fact, written by Rankin/Bass guru Romeo Muller and with Burgess Meredith voicing Puff.
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posted
Hey Bob...are you talking about Puff the Magic Dragon or Pete's Dragon on the cartoon?
How old are your first set of twins?? How did you end up with 2 sets of twins?? That is very rare...I am sure you already know that...
I totally am having this whole anxiety about my son growing up...he's 13, and that is like the crossing over age.
It's like for girls when they put away all their Barbie dolls, it's like they loose their imagination to play, and it is a total bummer.
It is because you have only such a short amount of time to be a child....and the rest of your life to be an adult...and even though some adults refuse to totally grow up and still like to have fun...it is not the same.
It is not the same as believing in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus with all your heart, and what that feels like.
It is a sad and touching song....and it isn't about dope smoking...someone made that up, and a bunch more believed it, but the guy that wrote it.. ought to know what he was thinking when he wrote it, so I'll go by him, and not some dope smoker that was probably high when they heard the song, and came up with their own theory.
posted
Pete's Dragon was a live action Disney movie with a cartoon dinosaur and Puff the Magic Dragon was just a cartoon. According to Chris their were 3 of them but I only remember 1 personally.
Ryan & Nicholas just turned 3 in July while Kimberly & Christopher are just 4 months old.
As for how it happened I could draw you a picture but I'm sure you saw the video in sex ed class. It was just like that only I am bigger in the pants than that guy was (At least that's what I tell myself to make myself feel better)& we tried different positions. Actually when my wife was trying to get pregnant the first time it was like work. My wife would call me into the room when she was ready and bark commands at me like my boss does. Obviously they weren't the same kind of commands (move to the left, higher, lower, harder???, not so hard, etc...) or I would have had a sexual harrasement suit but you get the idea.
I think Toy Story 2 captured it perfectly when Jesse gets left in a box on the side of the road and that song is playing, I think it is Sarah McLachlan. I always get choked up at that because of exactly what you are talking about.
Since we're talking here and you just turned 38, like I will be doing next month, have you been asking yourself a lot of questions about your past lately? I find myself wondering if I made the right decisions in life. Don't get me wrong I wouldn't change 1 second of my life with my wife & kids but I feel like I made a lot of mistakes in life and am having a hard time dealing with everything I did growing up. I never drank, smoke, or did drugs but I made a lot of relationship mistakes and I wonder if I had done things differently at certiain crossroads in my life would I still have ended up where I am today?
Thanks for listening and if you have any advice I would love to hear it.
Bob
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That is funny about the sex ed lesson for the day...but that wasn't exactly what I was needing to know....I know where babies come from- I have one of my own. I just was curious how you ended up with 2 sets of twins, that close together in age. I wondered if someone must have been take fertility drugs, or if it just happened naturally...how very rare that is, and are there other sets of twins in your family??
You need the Partridge Family Bus to get around in.
At my birthday party this weekend, my old room mate came, and it was weird...because she and I met when I was 18...and my mom was 38...so now I am 38, and thinking how could I be old enough to have an 18 year old (even though I don't-yet)...But I feel like I am about 24- at the most...so I can't grasp the fact that I am pushing 40 soon, and that feels old to me.
I never did drugs or smoked or drank ever....which I am grateful about every day.
But...of course everyone probably thinks about relationships....and how you end up with who you end up with in life, and how you get the family that you have, but as long as your happy...then you can't second guess yourself.
There's people from my past that I wish I could just be able to talk to them every once and awhile, just to see how their life turned out too...that to me is the saddest part of life, is there are people out there in the world that at one time meant everything to you...and then life kepts moving and you move on and they move on, and you never see them again, but you have a past life that you remember still...and it almost feels like they died.
I think the older you get...the more you think about the past...because your future gets smaller and your past gets bigger every year that goes by.
(I have no clue, if that is what you wanted to know or not)...but basically when I skipped going to my class reunion..that was kind of hard, but I realized that the people that are in my life currently are the people I want to spend my time with, if the people from my past had made an effort to stay in touch over the years...then they would be in my present. So, I feel like I really have learned what is important.
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