My Brain on Candy

So I was sitting at work today, feeling entirely unmotivated to do much of anything. I think it’s just that time of year, and my brain is starting to hibernate.

While staring at my Google homepage, thinking that my daily horoscope was accurate, that it WAS time to take care of myself, the song “I Want Candy” started repeating in my head. Unfortunately only, like, four measures of it were playing, including the actual words “I want candy…” and then some drums.

Here. Enjoy it for yourself. This guy did.

I didn’t even want candy. I didn’t remember who sang the song. And fuck if I could remember anything beyond those words. With some mental visualization techniques, I started to remember other parts of the melody, but no other words. Maybe I never even knew the words.

Sitting in our living room with the worn olive carpet, I picked up an EP record out of a tall stack that belonged to my dad in high school. My little record player in its self-enclosing, tough yellow case was open and positioned at my side. At age 7, this was one of my favorite records, and therefore it deserved the most play time. I grabbed my microphone, conveniently attached to a cassette player with a blue plastic spiral cord, and then pushed the plastic red button. Record.

I really wanted to Google the song and its lyrics, but some of us don’t have dot-com jobs (anymore) where reading blogs and downloading music is an expected part of your day.

Mostly I wanted to know where the song came from. From what recesses of my memory had it been inspired?

Maybe the song was recalled due to some deep-seated need for mental escape. The youthfulness and joy of this simple declarative sentence had taken over my brain and reversed my age to 7. Age 7, when I didn’t have to change my cell phone plan if I had a boyfriend. Who cared about investment advisors and their government regulations, complicated Form ADVs, U4s, Schedule Fs? Marketing packets were something that, when left over, I could’ve cut up and colored on and glued back together for an art project. When I was 7, the most important part of my day involved making a new hot pad for my mom with fabric loops.

It’s not uncommon to reminisce for the simpler days, but that’s not exactly what had happened. “I Want Candy” had forced itself upon me, as if something in the Universe was saying, Hey you… take a break. Enjoy this little ditty and tell me how you feel afterwards. And for God’s sake, stop taking yourself so seriously.