On Getting Skunked

A friend was telling me how his neighbor’s dog had gotten “skunked”, recently, while they were out for a bike ride. Usually, his friend is able to reign in the leash in time, but this time the little dog was too quick to lunge and startled the little beastie, and got skunked…royally.

I was thinking about how interesting relationships can go south on the rare occasion, and how one party usually gets ‘skunked’ in the process of the parting. Trouble is, sometimes you never know quite what spooked the stinky little varmit..it seemed so pleasant and beautiful and easy going until that fateful moment. And sometimes you never see what hits you until you have a face full of stink, and then when you finally crack open an eye to look, the critter is *poof* gone!

Now, the hard part isn’t getting over the incident, you can mostly easily forgive the shooter its “oops!”…the hard part is to get the stink off of you, and for this I have no good solution. In a way, if you’re still in love with the stinker, you really don’t smell the stink after a while, but others sure can!

I’ve looked to different songs to help give relief for this wretched condition, and the only one I can come up with is, “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair” from the Rogers & Hammerstein musical, “South Pacific”. But we all know how that shampooing never worked for Nelly Forbush, who overcame her fears and went right back to her exotic fella, …so that example really never washes in my book.

What songs have you found of help to get over a lost or missing love? I’m not into revenge songs, so leave those out please, although I’m quite certain they might be cathartic!