Who is this ''Alyssa'' person, and why should I care?

I don't like country music. Period. Please don't take offense if you happen to like it. I don't like shellfish either, and I know plenty of nice folks who seem to genuinely enjoy eating the very same science-fiction-sized insectoid sea-critters that I find so off-putting. My stance on country music isn't a matter of me being "above" that particular musical style, it's just one small facet of who I am.

Besides, I actually like some country songs; it's just country music that makes me want to cut my ears off with a dull pair of pinking sheers. It isn't so much the music itself that I despise as the category. In fact, I probably feel that way about most musical styles. In the end I either like or dislike the song, without regard to what aural box the industry decided to shove it into. As I think about it, it's more the trappings of this or that style that annoy me. Does a country singer lose his voice if he doesn't have a ten gallon hat or sideburns? Does having their pants down around their knees help hip-hop artists when they consult their rhyming dictionaries? But I digress...

A couple of years ago I received a cheap but functional shower radio from a coworker in one of those obligatory and largely joyless corporate gift-swaps. I slapped a couple of double-A's into it and stuck it to the wall of my shower, and from time to time I bother to turn it on and search the dial for one of the three stations that it actually receives. (I assume the transmitter for these is located somewhere in my backyard.) I switched it on yesterday, and after a few minutes of painstakingly twisting the tuning knob by no more than a couple of Angstroms at a time, I managed to tune in a country song.

The song was called, "Alyssa Lies." I knew that within a few seconds because it only took that long for the singer to croon "Alyssa Lies" roughly 74 times. For reasons I can only attribute to a knee-jerk desire to find fault with country music "on spec" combined with the fact that at 44 years of age, there is absolutely nothing I find interesting about my own body, I actually bothered to pay attention to the lyrics. Besides, in 2007 we're pretty much hard-wired by the media to want to know everything about everyone else, so my curiosity was piqued. Who the hell is this Alyssa, and what's she lying about? I figured Alyssa was some woman who'd done the singer wrong... that old staple of country music themes. But I was wrong.

As I listened to this stupid country song playing on my stupid orange shower radio in my stupid preformed fiberglass shower, I started crying like a little girl. I didn't "get misty" or "tear up" or "get verklempt" (as they used to say on SNL's "Coffee Talk"), I bawled like a frigging baby who's been spanked hard while dicing onions in a tear gas factory. I cried so hard that I actually laughed once or twice at how absolutely pathetic it was to be reacting that way to some stupid country song. I put one hand on the wall to steady myself, hunched my shoulders, and sobbed uncontrollably while the words of the song sank in...

"Alyssa lies, in the classroom.
Alyssa lies, everyday in school.
Alyssa lies to the teachers
as she tries to cover every bruise."

I guess the meaning of the song took me by surprise. It was so far removed from what I expected, and simultaneously so completely on-target where what's most important to me in the world is concerned. I don't know whether it's a good song or sucks. I lack the capacity to make a dispassionate, rational critique of it musically. I'm pretty sure it isn't a bad song, but it wasn't the music that hit me so hard. What yanked my heart out through my tear ducts was the thought of any child finding pain and sorrow where every child should find only love and solace.

Being a father is the single most important thing in my life. I realize that statement is something of a cliché, something every parent is supposed to say; but those of you who know me and have known me in the presence of my children have seen for yourselves that it's more than that for me. I am good at many things, but I am a great dad. I don't write that to brag, I write it to express how completely incomprehensible it is for me to know that anyone could do anything but cherish those whom God has placed in their care.

Loving and caring for my children is the one thing in my life that has from day one been effortless and joyful. I spent most of my life waiting for something to happen, feeling somehow unfinished and incomplete. That changed the day my daughter was born. As soon as she was delivered, the nurse took her over to the warming table and gave her a vitamin K shot. My little girl cried for the first time in her life, and when she did, I whispered a promise in her tiny ear that I have kept and will keep for the rest of my life, "Nothing that hurts that doesn't help." That's such a little thing to promise. Seems to me it's the very least every child deserves.