10/2/10: Gwen Stefani Is Just A Girl

Just this morning, I thought, offhand, that there had been a thirsty drought of synchronicity as of late (of ones that I could relate here, at least). That, however, was soon remedied.

The first ingredient came around three this afternoon, while I drank cheap coffee and loaded up my iPod knockoff with music, in preparation for cutting the day's grass. I settled on several albums, including Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt, a classic. It had been years since I'd listened to it, long enough for it to shed its played-out status, and I looked forward to reopening the old grooves while I laid waste to the local greenery.

Ingredient number two came when I left for town and found smoke issuing from under my hood, so much a corny car commercial. My mechanic was a block away, so I zipped down there, watching my truck's temperature gauge climb angrily. Long story short, my radiator's cap had, mysteriously, come loose, and I only had to fill it back up. However, I had to wait an hour before doing so, for the engine to cool. As it happened, my gym shares a lot with my mechanic, so I went and worked out in the meantime, despite having no plans to do so today.

Ingredient number three came as I worked out, listening to Tragic Kingdom. By the time the album had progressed to the third track, "Just A Girl", I was pretty high on endorphins and my thoughts were growing long, and I remembered a Gwen Stefani interview I had read when I still read such crap. In it, "Just A Girl" was brought up, along with how it perpetually received play on the radio, how people wouldn't give it a rest, blah blah blah; and I thought, distantly, I have never heard "Just A Girl" on the radio. Then the next song came on and I forgot all about it.

The clincher came later in the afternoon. Again, I'll paraphrase: I had to be somewhere at five, but because of my freak radiator-cap incident and its stealing an hour from my schedule, I was forced to go early and wait for approximately ten minutes, in my truck. Bored, I by chance turned on the radio, something I very rarely do, and wouldn't have done today if not for my profaned schedule. I frequency-surfed for a while, listening to snatches of songs and skirting advertisements, and then came across a local college station that has a taste for '90s, playing the tail-end of "Just A Girl".