~I Was Dreaming When I Wrote This

Originally posted 23 Nov 2017

We have gathered here today to get through this thing called “Alphonso knows a disturbing amount of Prince lyrics by heart”. But I’m here to tell you there’s something else, the test to prove it. Growing up there were two things  (Ok, there were obviously more than just two things, just stick with me here) that I could always count on. One, if I woke up to the sound of Prince playing on the radio it meant that my Mom was cleaning. And Two, if my Mom was cleaning in the morning EVERYONE was cleaning for the rest of that day.

Like clockwork, almost every weekend during the school year I knew that if I didn’t hear Prince when I woke up Saturday morning that I would most likely hear it on Sunday. During the summer was the worst. You never knew when it would happen, so there would be times where I would have to cancel plans with my gang called The Disciples because I randomly woke up to find Thieves In The Temple (I REALLY wanted to put a cool double entendre or two in here… This one didn’t work as well as I had hoped), stealing my free time. Of course, there were times when we would wake up to some other late 70’s- earl 90’s music, but that just meant that my Dad had momentarily taken control of the radio… It wouldn’t last long, a two to three song intermission is all we usually got. So when I saw this quiz on my sister’s Facebook I obviously had to take it. Eventually, oddly, my family ended up looking forward to Prince in the morning. Hmm, morning… Mourning… Close enough for a segue.

This next part is going to sound a little off, just stick with me. Now, how can I put this in a way as to not offend or unnerve? I never really understood how people could get so emotional over the death of a celebrity. I mean, these people don’t even know you exist, how could you be that connected to them? Well let me tell you, Prince is one of two celebrities that nearly brought me to tears when I heard of his passing. I mean, it really hit me. He has been “involved” in my life for as long as I can remember. Wait, Prince came out in like ’78 right?… So then he’s been involved in my life for my entire life then I guess. Wow.

Ok… Full disclosure… I’ve been working on this post for four days now. I’d write a little, YouTube some Prince, write a little more, watch/listen to more Prince, reread what I wrote because I lost track, binge on more Prince… You get the point. Right now I’m kind of at a loss for words, I lost my train of thought and I’ve found myself accidentally typing lyrics as I sing them. I should probably turn the music off… Nah… I even thought about putting links to a couple of my favorites on here but then I remembered how strongly he felt about free music… But I want to leave you something, since this whole thing just took a weird turn, here’s one of my favorite videos (probably my favorite honestly) of people talking about Prince.

~
Until next time, it has been thirty five years since we partied like it was 1999…

P.S. I’ve spoken a few times already about how much I suck at social media. I took this Facebook quiz, exited out of it without posting it, then had to find it and retake it in order to get this screenshot, and again “forgot” to post it to my page. For the record, I got 100% both times. This would probably be a good time for me to figure out how to attach a link to a picture on here… Nah, I’ll let Future Alphonso worry about that.