One Fine Day and the Man Who Can't Be Moved

There I was, in the bathroom taking a shower, when the song came on, and I had to laugh. It was the old song One Fine Day, and I had to laugh because it took me back to the summer of 1979, when I played it almost every day after having my heart broken by a girl I was in choir with…we’ll call her Paula...focusing on the line “some fine day, you’re gonna want me for your [guy].”

I laughed about the fact that almost 40 years later, it’s safe to say that some fine day she probably never did come around to wanting me for her guy; but that’s OK, because I got over her.

Which caused me to laugh again, because the other song that was my mantra that summer was Crystal Gayle’s I’ll Get Over You; and by November of that year, I had gotten over her, and was in a relationship that lasted for roughly the next six years.

Funny, isn’t it, how when we’re in the midst of a breakup, or in its immediate aftermath, it can seem like the most important thing in the world…the most devastating thing in the world, and the thing we’re sure we’ll never recover from. Funny how when we’re in the midst of it, it’s very hard to see how a breakup that you didn’t ask for can be opening the door to something else…to something that’s perhaps better than what you’re leaving behind. And so you work your hardest to try to hold on to what you’re losing. And once you’ve lost it, you think about ways of getting it back.

Here, the song Until You Come Back to Me comes to mind. When it first came out, it was a simple song about someone who is so singled-minded about getting their old lover back that they’re gonna “camp on [their] steps” and “rap on [their] door, tap on [their] windowpane.” Now it seems more like the anthem of a stalker who needs to be given a restraining order.

Which brings me back to the summer of ’79. You see, it was more than I’ll Get Over You that got me over Paula, there was an internal conversation I had with myself that made me see everything in a whole new light:

Wise Keith: So she was the perfect one for you right?

Sad Keith: Yeah.

Wise Keith: And you’re miserable because she left you without saying a word, right?

Sad Keith: Yeah.

Wise Keith: But if she was the perfect one for you, would she have treated you like that?

Sad Keith: Wha…? Huh? Whoa! Thanks, I needed that!

My heart was still broken because I had been treated badly by someone I had trusted with it, but…I was no longer pining over her. She treated me badly, and that was a sign that she wasn’t right for me, and I should just move on. Which I did…and was happy about a few months later.

Which brings me to The Man Who Can’t Be Moved. A beautiful song about a guy who just can’t move on from the fact that his girlfriend broke up with him; and hopes that one fine day, if he just stays in the spot where they first met, she’ll come back. I want to smack this boy around and say, “Get over it! Move on! There’s someone better for you out there, and you’re gonna miss her if you keep obsessing over this one!”

“If she was the perfect one for you, she wouldn’t have left you like that!”

I want to tell him that one fine day he’ll just think of her as a nice memory, and a lovely footnote to his romantic life.

Just as one fine day I felt the same about Paula.