I was driving home from the hospital on Saturday to visit a Soldier when I was listening to Renee Olstead’s latest CD, Skylark. One of the last racks on the CD is a remake of an old standard: “Ain’t we got fun?”
As I drove, I considered first the economic situation. Her version of the song’s lyrics read:
Every Morning, Every Evening
Ain’t we got fun?
Not much money, oh but honey
Ain’t we got fun?
Our rent’s unpaid dear
And we haven’t a bus
But smiles were made, dear
Oh, For people like us
There’s nothing sure
The rich get rich and poor get poorer
In the meantime, In between time
What a great attitude to have! We can get so depressed about our situations that we remain unhappy—but we don’t need money to be happy!
I then considered that I was traveling home from seeing a man whose life is never going to be the same again. I could be depressed about it. There are a lot of thing that we can be depressed about;
“But, smiles were made dear, for people like us.”
We ought to be people with this outlook on life. We need to look at our life, whether good or bad and see that “we got fun” regardless.
I did some research on the song when I got back and found that Renee Olstead’s version was much different from the original. I would encourage you to listen to both, they are both enjoyable. The original song focuses more on children which was rather humorous to me, especial with this verse about twins:
Just to make their trouble nearly double
Something happen’d last night
To their chimney a gray bird came
Mister Stork is his name
And I’ll bet two pins
A pair of twins
Just happen’d in with the bird
Still they’re very gay and merry
Just at dawning I heard
Every morning
Every evening
Don’t we have fun
Twins and cares dear come in pairs dear
Don’t we have fun
It is a choice we all make whether we are going to be happy or not. We can stay depressed during the redeployment, during deployment, during hardship, or during economic hard times…or we can ask “Ain’t we got fun?”
