{"id":556,"date":"2021-12-03T07:38:42","date_gmt":"2021-12-03T07:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.illinoisstate.edu\/euphemism\/17-1\/?page_id=556"},"modified":"2021-12-03T07:38:42","modified_gmt":"2021-12-03T07:38:42","slug":"wouldnt-it-be-nice","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/17-1\/wouldnt-it-be-nice\/","title":{"rendered":"Wouldn’t It Be Nice"},"content":{"rendered":"
Meghan Bennett\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

It\u2019s a new town, and I\u2019m driving down streets that don\u2019t know your tires<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

and I\u2019m trying to sing all the layers of \u201cGod Only Knows\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

all alone. There used to be a romance to this, in the \u201890s, so they tell me,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

to sitting in a parking lot after work crying along to the Beatles,\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

or Oasis, before there was an app to tell your mother where you are<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

so now she\u2019ll text and ask if you\u2019ll stop\u00a0and grab milk\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

on your way home from your melancholy.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are fragments that are still the same: the shirt that smells\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

of fryer grease, the yearning to have been born in a different era,\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

and the crappy mix tapes, only they\u2019re playlists now, 30-second\u00a0ads\u2014<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

try explaining Bluetooth to John Lennon, right\u2014<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

but you don\u2019t feel very romantic.\u00a0Instead\u00a0you just feel cold,\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

despite the postmortem spasm of summer, despite the shoddy AC,\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

like you missed the ship everybody else got on and now\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

you\u2019re in the water,\u00a0freezing and barely treading and there\u2019s no Leo\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

or Kate or hell, James Cameron<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

to tell you how beautiful you look while drowning.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We used to make a game of that: try to find the VHS\u00a0<\/span>Titanic\u00a0<\/span><\/i>box set<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

at every yard sale your gran dragged us to on Sunday mornings,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

amidst the label-less 45s we\u2019d buy and play on her creaky turntable,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

a\u00a0treasure hunt decades\u00a0in the making, three-minute time travel.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m the headless naked Barbie for 10 cents in a cobwebby bin.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m the girl in the supermarket parking\u00a0lot,\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

trying not to think about how happy you must be that I\u2019m not\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

haunting our old town like a stubborn lovelorn ghost,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

and how happy you must be that I\u2019m still thinking about you,\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

trying to find something to hate in all the songs you used to play me.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meghan Bennett\u00a0 It\u2019s a new town, and I\u2019m driving down streets that don\u2019t know your tires\u00a0 and I\u2019m trying to sing all the layers of \u201cGod Only Knows\u201d\u00a0 all alone. There used to be a romance to this, in the \u201890s, so they tell me,\u00a0 to sitting in a parking lot after work crying along… <\/p>\n

Read more Wouldn’t It Be Nice<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-556","page","type-page","status-publish","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/17-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/17-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/17-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/17-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/17-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/17-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":557,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/17-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/556\/revisions\/557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/17-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}