My Lazy Day

Yesterday was one of those days.  I’m sure you know what I mean.  It was one of those days when I didn’t feel like doing anything.  I didn’t have any ambition. I had no gumption at all. I had a good number of books from the library to read—but I didn’t want to read.  I had some household chores to do, but I didn’t want to do them.  It was as if my “get up and go” had “got up and went!”  It was one of those lazy days.  Do you know what I mean?  Gene Autry, Bob Wills, Willie Nelson, and Merle Haggard would know and understand.  They all sang the song that kept coming to my mind yesterday, “It’s My Lazy Day.”

Well, I might have gone fishin’, I got to thinkin’ it over

The road to the river is a mighty long way

Well, it must be the reason, no rhyme or no reason

I’m takin’ it easy, it’s my lazy day. 

I did manage to prepare lunch and dinner. I even managed to finish the job, started the day before, of re-arranging the pantry.  But I did it all without much enthusiasm.  I was just plain lazy; just wanted to take it easy.  I sat down to read, but decided to turn on the TV instead.  I watched the 1963 film “Bye, Bye Birdie,” starring Ann-Margaret and Dick Van Dyke.  It was a really silly movie, but Ann-Margaret’s dancing and singing made it worth while. Then I watched “Oliver!” This was a 1968 British film based on Charles Dickens’s novel “Oliver Twist.” I’d never seen the movie before.  I watched the whole thing and learned a new song or two, like “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two.”  

This movie was followed by one of my favorite musical films: “South Pacific.”  I like it because of the Roger & Hammerstein music, but also because the film deals with some really deep and serious issues (love, prejudice, age, youth, loneliness, war, bigotry, death, poverty, etc.).  I first saw “South Pacific” in 1959.  I remember the timing because my African-American friend, Tony Tebout was with me in the theater.  We were “Younger Than Springtime” then and filled with teenage hopes and altruisms.  But when we heard Lt. Joe Cable sing “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” that youthful idealism was met with the real world’s fear, hate, and bigotry, which still hangs on and disrupted my lazy day.

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear

You’ve got to be taught from year to year

It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear

You’ve got to be carefully taught

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made

And people whose skin is a different shade

You’ve got to be carefully taught

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late

Before you are six or seven or eight

To hate all the people your relatives hate

You’ve got to be carefully taught.