Some people just seem able to find that special someone sometime during their lives. Sometimes it happens early on in life and sometimes it happens later. Don't ask me the "how" of the whole deal though. Greater minds than I will ponder that for the ages I guess. Even though I'm all for science, there are something's I don't think it will ever be able to figure out. Maybe that's a good thing.
On the other side of the coin, there are those of us amongst us, myself included, who probably don't know a good thing when they see it. Yeah, for me, for awhile anyway, the grass was always greener and the water was always sweeter on the other side of the hill. Maybe they just don't make mountains high enough to climb or maybe it's just easier to walk away from the mountain entirely.
I been a bad boy
I been long gone
I been out there
I never phone home
I never gave you not one little clue where I'd been
I've been a bad boy again.
Too many years ago, when I was a young pup full of piss and vinegar and fresh out of the service of Uncle Sam, I took a lot of liberties with life. No night was too late and there were no such thing as a "bad friend". Shit, at the time, I was more afraid of "missing" something of such import that I couldn't have lived with myself. Yep, I had to be in on the center of it.
I got a way of
Fallin' in love
With angels that don't shove
You into thinkin' that you're committing a sin
I've been a bad boy again.
Trouble was, for all my drinkin' and carousin', there was also a family at home. One that needed me more than I seemed to need them. There were girls at the bar and girls at work that kept telling me everything I thought I wanted to and needed to hear. Truth be told, the time was when I'd rather have heard the songs of the jukebox and the chase the possibility of passion to that of the sound of crying babies and what I thought was a nagging wife who would probably be dead asleep by the time I decided to call it a night.
I've been a bad boy again
Now I've been a bad boy again
And all the trouble that I'm in
Makes me a bad boy again
Oh, there were the endless apologies. The old "I swear honey, it'll never happen again" and the promise that you made would be broken in almost the instant you made it. I'd think to myself, "Shit, she'd never walk out on me." After I was "King of the Fuckin' Universe" and I could get away with anything I wanted to. My family was like a planet that circled around my sun instead of it being the other way around.
I must have walked 'round
In a real fog
I was your best friend
Now I'm a real dog
I never thought that now
Would ever catch up with then
I've been a bad boy again.
Christ, I don't how long I walked around with that attitude. Obviously, it was far too long because there' are certain things you miss that you just don't get back. Second chances, not to mention third and fourth ones too, don't come along every day. These days, when the house is quiet and I'm left alone with my thoughts, they're like an echo that won't go away.
Ya know what?, I don't want them too either. We should all, at some time or another, take pause and reflect on ourselves a little bit. It's good for the soul. The "now" has indeed, caught up with the "then".
I've been a bad boy
I sung a wrong song
I took a left turn
I stayed too long
As you were thinkin' that I wasn't
Just like all other men
I've been a bad boy again.
Yup, I rode that lifestyle like I didn't have a choice when if fact, I did. I just didn't see it. Chalk it off to mistakes one makes as a youth or to just inexperience in dealing with the so-called real life. The mistakes, they haunt you, especially when they're of your own doing.
It's funny how sometimes it takes miles and years for you to realize just how far down the road you've gone. The time, well, it just sort of disappears behind you in the rear view mirror and there's no place for you to turn around. The only place that lies ahead of you is dead ahead and you sit there and think that, maybe, someday things will at least catch up with and not pass you by in the other lane.
I've been a bad boy again
Now I've been a bad boy again
And all the trouble that I'm in
Makes me a bad boy again
Let's hope that the eminent philosopher George Santayana was right when he said that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
I don't think I could I could live myself if I did.
Lyrics to "Bad Boy" copyright by Mr. John Prine who either lives inside my head or has been an innocent bystander or spectator throughout varies periods and episodes in my life.
CST Approved
| 
