She Bop by Cyndi Lauper |
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Fiona Price
Traffic lights, Glen Waverley, 1984
No-one does scorn like a teenage girl. At fourteen, Swagata deployed hers regularly, with rolling eyes and tossing black plait. Two years younger and far more timid, I watched her like a rabbit in a cattery. When her father’s red Nissan turned up to drive us home from school, she sat beside him surfing radio stations and I sat behind and lay low.
One winter afternoon, at a red light in Glen Waverley, Cyndi Lauper's She-Bop came on. Swagata's father started listening to the lyrics and his brow furrowed deeper and deeper. 'What is this... bop?' he asked, looking at his daughter to clarify. With a withering sigh at his middle-aged ignorance, Swagata went in, guns blazing. 'Bop, Dad,' she said, in scathing tones. 'B-O-P. Bop. It's a kind of dance.' His eyebrows rose and his eyes went shifty, but he wisely said 'Ah yes,' and drove on.
Many years later, in a fit of nostalgia, I bought Cyndi Lauper's greatest hits collection. She’d titled it Twelve Deadly Cyns and included a fold-out with lyrics. As I skimmed this idly, my eye fell on She-Bop and stopped at the line They say I’d better stop or I’ll go blind. Hang on, I thought. I scanned the rest of the song again. Wanna go south and get me some more. Can’t stop messing with the danger zone. Ain’t no law against it yet.
I thought back to Swagata’s dad in the car, that afternoon in 1984. For all her scorn, fourteen-year-old Swagata had revealed herself to be far more naïve than her father. She and I had missed what was obvious to him. A chuckle bubbled up as I remembered how he’d nodded and avoided her eye. Ignorant of youth slang and music he might have been, but in other things Dad really had known best.
More on Fiona Price
Fiona never recovered from her love of ‘80s pop. She now records songs of her own, and is currently focussing on writing picture books and trying to sell her Rapunzel novel Let Down Your Hair.
Traffic lights, Glen Waverley, 1984
No-one does scorn like a teenage girl. At fourteen, Swagata deployed hers regularly, with rolling eyes and tossing black plait. Two years younger and far more timid, I watched her like a rabbit in a cattery. When her father’s red Nissan turned up to drive us home from school, she sat beside him surfing radio stations and I sat behind and lay low.
One winter afternoon, at a red light in Glen Waverley, Cyndi Lauper's She-Bop came on. Swagata's father started listening to the lyrics and his brow furrowed deeper and deeper. 'What is this... bop?' he asked, looking at his daughter to clarify. With a withering sigh at his middle-aged ignorance, Swagata went in, guns blazing. 'Bop, Dad,' she said, in scathing tones. 'B-O-P. Bop. It's a kind of dance.' His eyebrows rose and his eyes went shifty, but he wisely said 'Ah yes,' and drove on.
Many years later, in a fit of nostalgia, I bought Cyndi Lauper's greatest hits collection. She’d titled it Twelve Deadly Cyns and included a fold-out with lyrics. As I skimmed this idly, my eye fell on She-Bop and stopped at the line They say I’d better stop or I’ll go blind. Hang on, I thought. I scanned the rest of the song again. Wanna go south and get me some more. Can’t stop messing with the danger zone. Ain’t no law against it yet.
I thought back to Swagata’s dad in the car, that afternoon in 1984. For all her scorn, fourteen-year-old Swagata had revealed herself to be far more naïve than her father. She and I had missed what was obvious to him. A chuckle bubbled up as I remembered how he’d nodded and avoided her eye. Ignorant of youth slang and music he might have been, but in other things Dad really had known best.
More on Fiona Price
Fiona never recovered from her love of ‘80s pop. She now records songs of her own, and is currently focussing on writing picture books and trying to sell her Rapunzel novel Let Down Your Hair.