They were in and we were out,
The football captains and cheerleaders,
Against us.
It was the colder war.
The Beach Boys joined the others,
A column of surfboard studded GTOs,
The in-crowd Green Beret -
Champions of the irrelevant.
It's hard to be like the Beach Boys
When your hair is wavy and brown
You're skinny, clumsy and slow
And your father is on oxygen.
I wondered why they sang about stupid things
And the dumbest line by far -
Kept repeating - bob around
Bob, bob, bob - bob, bob around.
Decades later, I took high school kids
To a space museum.
We attended the laser light show.
(It was an optics lesson.)
The colored beams danced to the old enemy -
The Beach Boys.
But now, there was no us and them.
The war was over.
Now, lead-footed old ladies,
And California convertibles seemed
Pure genius.
And I forgave the Beach Boys.
I brushed away the tears.
It would have been hard explaining
Why T-birds and surfer girls
Made the professor cry.
Even later, I discovered
That the line in the song
Was not bob around.
It was Barbara Ann.
No matter,
It makes me laugh.
And I like to bob around
For joys once lost, now found.