My Ship Isn't Coming And I Just Can't Pretend

When I listen to a Rush song occasionally I get these flashback images of my buddies and I doing our 2/3 air-band in Pete's basement. I call it a two third air band because I would play an invisible bass guitar and keyboard a la lead singer Geddy Lee, Steve would bounce around making "just drank really potent lemon juice" faces while doing guitar solos in the style of Alex Lifeson, and Pete, of course, would hammer out his magic on a real set of drums almost perfectly in time with the professor Neil Peart.

Some fond memories of three giant nerds passing the time in a small Northern Ontario town. Good times, as my buddy Mathew Growden would say.

But there's one Rush song that now has a new, funnier memory to go with it.

Last night Alexander and I were heading to the grocery store in the truck and listening to Y108. The Rush song Fly By Night came on. As the song reached the chorus...

Fly by night, away from here
Change my life again
Fly by night goodbye my dear
My ship isnt coming and I just cant pretend

...for the first time, Alexander shouted out in a huge voice while waving his hand in the air and smiling proudly at me: "Byyyyyeeeeee!" (prompted, naturally, by the "goodbye my dear" line) And, of course, he did it every time the chorus came on, completely delighted with himself that, like Daddy, he was singing along to the song, or at least to a part of the song that he had some sort of context for.

I'm sure that, like me, once he's a teenager, he'll start feeling this burning need inside to get out and explore the rest of the world, to leave the nest and fly away from his parents. So I'll rest assured that his "bye" right now is a fun "see you again very shortly" kind of "bye" rather than that "I'm off to University" or "I'm going to travel Europe for a few years" kind of "bye."