46. You Want Some?

46. "If You Want My Love" by Cheap Trick

This song came out the summer of 1982--the same time I began to finally put some height and muscles on my body. Well, at least enough to think it was safe for me to play football the next year. I spent most of my days that summer as a lifeguard, where each hour of my work was spent watching dozens of beautiful girls, along with hundreds of not-so-beautiful ones. Yes, I had to look at boys too, but I figured I got paid to do that. The enjoyment I got from looking at the girls was just the icing on the paycheck.

But here's the crappy part of the gig. Lifeguards are supposed to watch people, not talk to them--unless you were blowing the whistle and telling them to obey some pool rule and/or kicking them out of the pool for either (a) an approaching lightning storm or (b) lewd behavior. That meant I did not get to talk to any of these beautiful girls. And it turns out that if you want to have a relationship with a girl, you kind of have to talk to her. So my job wasn't like being a kid in a candy store. It was like being a starving kid in a candy store that isn't allowed to have any candy and isn't even supposed to look too long at any one piece of candy and is absolutely forbidden to talk to the candy.

That job turned out to be a perfect metaphor for my teenage love life during my junior and senior years of high school. And the song "If You Want My Love" is the perfect expression of that feeling I would get when I realized I was attracted to a girl (or even hopelessly infatuated with her) but couldn't force myself to talk to her to get the relationship started.

If I'd only had something interesting to get the girl to get the conversation started, my life would have been different. Yes, if I'd only had something that would get their attention--something like a brightly colored sweater with pineapples, pyramids, and camels on it.



This song also kind of sums up my thoughts about all those guys that had girlfriends but weren't loyal to them and would cast them aside for really no good reason at all. What was wrong with you jerks! If you find a girl that is willing to put up with your crap, hold on to her like grim death! See, if I had somehow lucked out to have a girlfriend, here's what I would have said to her.

You hold the secrets of love in this world.
I'm hypnotized by your ev'ry word.
A special face, a special voice,
A special smile in my life.

'Cause lonely is only a place.
You don't know what it's like...
You can't fight it.
It's a hole in my heart, in my heart.

If you want my love you got it.
When you need my love you got it.
I won't hide it.
I won't throw your love away, ooh.