75. Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside “Thirteen Years Old” Dirty Radio [Partisan]
“Tell me why I couldn’t cry.”
He couldn’t stand the way his father said his name. “Gray-um” was not how anyone else pronounced it and yet that was likely the way he heard it the most until his first day of kindergarten. Now that he was thirteen years old it just seemed ridiculous though. All day at school everyone would say it like a normal human being and then pops would roll up in his Impala, lean over while groaning to open the passenger door, and as he pulled back and pulled down his outdated sunglasses to get a better look at his son, the elongated two-syllable version would come tumbling out, preceded by a “hey” or a “hop on in.” One time on a day like this, the newly minted teenager turned to his dad, the sun in his eyes because he refused to don any form of tinted spectacles (and he couldn’t quite reach the visor yet), and asked him what his mom called him before she died. The car came to a slow halt at a stop light, the idle engine filled the silence for a few moments, and then without the usual toothy grin nor any uncouth attempt at humor (like he had half-expected from the old jokester), he merely said, “well, she’s the one who named you.” After adjusting himself in the seat as the car accelerated through the intersection, he reverted back to a shadow of his former self, adding, “you really think I called ‘em ‘gray-um crackers’ before you came around?”
Source: SoundCloud / smithblogsatlanta