Daye 39 / Ode To Billy Joe

when i was a little kid
my dad had this bobbie gentry cassette
and i remember playing
'ode to billy joe'
over and over and over
the opening lines of the first verse
('it was the third of june,
another sleepy dusty delta day...')
made me feel woozy
and by the time
bobbie gets to the line about
billy joe jumping off the tallahatchie bridge
i felt like i was floating outside of my body
the song is desolate
a gothic classic
as a five-year old
even i recognized that the matter-of-fact way
in which the suicide is discussed over dinner
by the narrator's family
is not the norm
it made my skin crawl
and i wondered why the girls family
were oblivious to her pain
why they had no idea
that billy joe was her 'secret' lover
and i worried whether her parents
really cared about her
and the more i thought
about that question
the more i began to worry
whether my own parents
really cared about me
it became my obsession
it shook me
i withdrew
questioned everything
looked for signs in the things
that happened around me
i hated to be away from my home
or from my parents
in case i returned to find
everything or everybody changed
i went over the lyrics in my head
searching for something that i may have missed
for a clue or a reassurance
i imagined i could travel back in time
to affect the outcome of the song
billy joe would be saved
and he and the girl could live happily ever after
i tried
i tried prayer
but the song’s outcome never changed
billy joe always jumped off the tallahatchie bridge
and his girl was always left
to spend the rest of her life pickin' flowers on choctaw ridge
and as for myself
i could never bear to imagine
what it was that billy joe
& the girl
had thrown from the bridge
i had been traumatised by a pop song
and it wouldn’t be the last time