Take A Chance on Me

"You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life. See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the Dancing Queen." Quinn our soon to be two-year-old had pointed to the CD player and said "music." I pushed the button, and it started to play. Away Quinn went, running in circles, stomping his feet, throwing his arms in the air–just like I used to dance in junior high.


For her birthday I got Steph, my wife, a CD she mentioned wanting once–-Abba Gold. I had given it to her in the morning before I left for work, and by the time I got home she'd listened to it enough for the day, and I had not heard it. So when Quinn asked to play it, it was probably the first time I'd heard an Abba song in a decade and a half. Quinn was having a blast. And so he and I danced through that song and the next one. And then the third began:

If you change your mind, I'm the first in line
Honey I'm still free
Take a chance on me

Music is an amazing thing. It has the awesome power to suddenly shake your consciousness and take you back to a different place and time. There are probably no more than half a dozen songs that so struck me when I first heard them that I can remember to this day the circumstances. "Take a Chance on Me" is one of them.

I was not a popular, trendy child. As a country kid I was, as one might assume, in the 4-H local club. My projects were few–-horses, leathercraft, woodworking, and dog obedience. Mrs. Carr was the leader for dog obedience.
Our dog at the time (and we went through many) was Princess. Like about every other dog we ever had, we got her because someone was moving and could not take the dog to the new place (this is peril of living in the country-–everyone wants to give you their pets). Princess came from my aunt and uncle. She was incredibly well trained. When we got her she knew exactly was an obedient dog was supposed to do. When you'd say "heal" she'd walk right along side you and sit immediately when you stopped. If you told her to stay, she'd wait there for hours if you forgot to go back and release her from the charge. She was so obedient and good natured that I learned absolutely nothing about training a dog, yet was still able to accumulate a number of ribbons at the annual fair.

After one particular dog obedience practice Mrs. Carr, for some reason I don't remember, took me home. The Carrs had van. This was at the time when that was just the coolest thing you could have. And this was not just a regular van off the dealer's lot. It was flashy with chrome wheels, a mural painted on the outside, and carpeting on the ceiling. It was like nothing I'd ridden in before. Our family car was a 1968 Plymouth 4 door sedan. It had weak rear springs so that while all of the popular cars of the day had the rear end
lifted higher than the front, our had the front riding higher than the rear. Going over a bump, the trailer hitch on the Plymouth would scrape the ground, sending sparks flying behind it. My dad always kept the rusty removable roof
racks on top of the car so that he could carry home lumber as needed.

Our Plymouth had an AM radio with a single speaker mounted in the dash. It always sounded crackly , with whirrs and buzzes as the electrical impulses from the engine interfered with the radio stations. I'd never heard it play
anything except weather reports. The Carr's van had speakers everywhere, and an AM-FM radio with an 8-track player (something I'd never seen before).

Mrs. Carr started the van and put in an 8-track tape. She turned it up to a volume I did not know existed. The sound was crystal clear. And out of the speakers that surrounded me came:

If you change your mind, I'm the first in line,
Honey I'm still free,
Take a chance on me . . .

I don't think I'd heard pop music before. At home we kids had a record player, but all of our records were ones my parents had bought years earlier and no longer listened to, at least in part because there were scratched. We had Peter Paul and Mary's "If I had a
Hammer" and the soundtrack for "The Sound of Music." But nothing like this.

Children, psychologists tell us, develop a sense of independence from their parents in a slow and gradual process. But I can remember when I first recognized that process had started and the song that prompted it. I had not
heard that particular song since that 1970's day. I had not even known who sang it. As we twisted and turned and I spun him in circles, the irony was not lost on me of dancing with my son to the music that ended the era in my own childhood when such things were possible. I tried not to think about it too much, because, for now, we can dance, we can jive, having the time of our lives.