The Taylor Swift Feelings

A few weeks ago, Julie and I drove down to Framingham, MA to visit our friend Meg. In our day trip travels, we listened to Red by Taylor Swift four times. We sang the words loudly and mostly incorrectly.

If her music is to be believed, T. Swift falls in love hard, with reckless romantic abandon, and also has maybe owned a Maserati before. Which is cool. But falling in love hard and with reckless abandon can be kind of difficult. Almost as difficult as owning a Maserati to drive down a dead-end street, probably.

“Do you think we’ll ever feel things as hard as Taylor Swift?” I asked after play number three.

“Nope,” said Julie.

And then we silently agreed to listen a fourth time.

A few days later, I came home from work, dropped my bag, and laid down on the living room floor with my coat and shoes still on. Jules was studying on the couch, balancing a cup of tea on a hardcover book that I would probably knock over later. (Our style of cleanliness: create a tornado of crap, sit directly in the middle of it for a few days, and then panic-clean when the anxiety sets in.)

Julie asked how my day was. From the floor, I tried to respond with that killer opening line from Red, but quickly realized that I didn’t actually remember what the line was.

“It was like… driving a red car straight into a concrete wall or something?”

It dawned on us both that despite the four consecutive song plays from the weekend before, neither of us could accurately sing a single line from the song. So we spit-balled a few of our own.

Loving him was like showing up for a job interview in a pharaoh costume.

Missing him was also like showing up for a job interview in a pharaoh costume.

Loving him was like trying to put a sweater on a big, dumb dog.

Missing him was like a turkey sandwich full of ants. 

Loving him was like trying to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with a garden gnome.

Missing him was like buying a Tesla that can only take left turns.

Loving him was like replacing all the light bulbs in the house with stuffed penguins.

Missing him was like forgetting all your tampons at home, when you have a lot of tampons at home.

Loving him was like trying to carve a reindeer out of a block of ice with no previous sculpting experience.

Missing him was like hearing a great-ass song in the grocery store and not being able to find it on Spotify later.

Loving him was like trying to put peanut butter on a termite.

Keep feeling your feelings, everybody. We’ll talk to you next Monday.