Until I met and married my husband, I had never watched an episode of
Murder, She Wrote,
Matlock or
Columbo (although, this could be because I hadn't yet developed the TV habits of a 70 year-old widow.)
The cultural exchange on my side included introducing Husband to a song that he
swore my family made up. If you know the title, you know half the chorus:
Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road.Caught in that tricky era between record players (ours was broken) and the Internet, we were unable to share the full reality of the song until my brother found a novelty song CD in a sale bin.
Before you know it, Husband, and later, our son, were cruising down the highway belting out:
It's dead, it's in the middle and it's stinking to high-high heav-van.I'm not sure why this song is such an integral part of my family life that I needed to be sure that my husband could hum along. I mean, our family loved the novelty songs. No one could change clothes without someone shouting out
Don't look Ethel.But
Dead Skunk was our song. I guess it had more sing-ability than
The Streak and more applicability to life racing down country roads in the back of Mom's lemon-yellow station wagon than, say
Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.Whatever the reason, I'm happy to look back on a great childhood and the wonderful memories we have. I can only hope as a Mother that my children will also think of me and all the cultural references I shared with them, whenever they see roadkill.
P.S. I refrained from photographing the
actual dead skunk at the end of our lane last week. Please do yourself a favor and
never type in "dead skunk" in Google Images.