Yesterday Luke said, “Would you want to come with me to the hardware store?” I didn’t really want to go with him to the hardware store, but I did suddenly want to listen to the song “Hardware Store” by Weird Al Yankovic.
What? You are not familiar with the song “Hardware Store?” It’s a deep cut. It’s not a parody of anything; it sounds vaguely religious / from the swelling emotional climax of an action movie if I had to categorize it. The premise of the song is that the narrator is excited because in his small town a hardware store will soon open. And that is all. It is a very pure song about one man’s love of hardware stores.
I said sure I would want to go, and we got in the car and I put on “Hardware Store." I don’t know all the words to this song because it’s one of those ones where Weird Al sings otherworldly quickly; if you ever tried to sing along to one of these songs you’d wonder about his breath control, because it really does seem impossible, to do what he does.
My sister Alexis got me into Weird Al, although I can’t remember the specifics. I know she was the one who liked him first, and if there was ever a dispute, she is the one who has always liked him more. We bought a house copy of “Running With Scissors” — that’s the one with the “American Pie” / “Star Wars” parody called “The Saga Begins” — from Target, and we wore it out. We took turns listening to it on our respective portable CD players.
Weird Al was enjoying a sort of second (or third) renaissance; he had a bunch of things going for him on VH1. Not only were they playing his music videos in the morning, but he was one in a set of rotating hosts on a short-lived celebrity game show called “The List,” where B-list guests composed top three lists about a whole host of topics; and also a “Behind The Music” about him aired repeatedly every two weeks or so. Regardless, we taped it. This way we could watch it whenever we wanted.
Alexis went so far as to get an AOL screen name that cemented her stan status: WeirdALexis. To be fair, she had a good actual name to make this happen. W-sophEI-rd Al doesn’t have the same ring. She also started a short-lived internet ‘zine (yes, there was a time when this was very much a thing) about Weird Al. There was only one issue, but still this took a kind of enthusiasm that Alexis alone was able to muster.
Alexis has loved a lot of things in her life, and I have written about it before. I think I keep writing about it because the diversity and breadth of her interests have always struck me as unlikely enough to seem vaguely fictional: oboes and harps, figure skating, jumping off rocks into lakes, sewing her own fashion designs, snowboarding, video gaming, running, yoga, computer fixing, computer coding, tattoo getting, gluten free cooking, holistic health, electric bicycles, her tiny dog, occasionally shifting brand allegiance to a few high-end brands, camping, hiking, floating down the water on an inner tube, being naked, being never naked, pot, not pot, teaching garden, bartending, meditation, singing, homemade furniture, and Weird Al. Alexis would get very into a thing, she would get pretty good at it, and then she would often move on to the next thing, proving to everyone that she was a polymath in every single possible way. I’d feel instantly jealous and possessive when she’d dip her toes into things I was also interested in — comedy, bird-watching, watercolors — and say, “You have to trust me when I talk about this, it is literally the only thing I think about.” What I was really saying was, “You are good at SO MANY THINGS. Please don’t try this thing that I do, because you’ll just end up being better than I am at it, too.”
We are sisters, so I imagine she feels something similar about me. We are also competitive. I hate admitting this, but I am probably a 7/10 in terms of how competitive a person can be. I hate admitting it because I am also competitive about being non-competitive. You see how this can spiral.
But I want to interject that, despite this innate competitiveness, Alexis was my person. When she was born, she became my person. This has remained unchanged for 31 years. You can openly compete with your person if you want to. They are not going to go anywhere. Even if your person liked Weird Al first, you can compete over perceived fandom. Your person will stay.
So I was competitive in 2000 about liking Weird Al. This is well documented in my diary from that year, which I am re-reading right now for a project. I love 2000 Sophie, a lot. I see how she has changed from 1997 Sophie, and even from 1999 Sophie. The Sophies before 2000 Sophie were all the time sad, writing about sadness, talking about sadness, performing sadness. Those Sophies hoped to win at sadness, expecting there to be a prize somewhere, even though no one else was playing the game.
But then along came Weird Al.
His “Behind The Music” is refreshing. That show was known for its sordid tales of affairs and overdoses, depressive episodes and brushes with death. No band or artist seemed exempt. Drama was inevitable if you played music, and as an aspiring musician, I studied these stories and took notes. I wondered which drug I would get into; or, I thought, maybe my boyfriend would die. Something tragic would have to happen to me, I was sure, because that was how you got famous, and I wanted so much to be famous.
But Weird Al’s “Behind The Music” was different. Nothing bad happened to Weird Al. His cooperative and loving parents bought him an accordion when a door-to-door accordion salesman came around pedaling them. He got into writing parodies, and people liked them! Coolio got mad at him for “Amish Paradise,” and Weird Al was kind of like, “That’s fair and I’m sorry. I thought you were cool with it, Coolio, but I can see that you’re not, and I wish I could apologize to you.” This seemed genuine. He had a lot of friends. He got enough sleep. And he never took anything too seriously.
So 2000 Sophie started to change accordingly. Not taking anything too seriously immediately began paying off, and I watched my friend group swell around me, suddenly interested in my company, like someone had dug me out of the backyard and finally polished me off. For Christmas, I went on eBay — which was a new and magical place — and spent 100 whole dollars on a VHS copy of the then-out-of-print Weird Al movie “UHF” as a present for Alexis.
Last month, Alexis gave it back to me, in a stack with “Spice World” and “Empire Records.”
“Do you want any of these?” She asked, thumbing through a stack of things she was getting rid of. I wanted all three of those videos because I am sentimental and she knows it. Nothing was offensive about Alexis’ desire to get rid of “UHF.” She was cleaning her house out, getting ready for her baby.
When I publish this blog post, Alexis’ due date will have been three days ago. I do not know what the baby’s name is going to be yet, although I have begged to know, and I have a secret guess. Alexis doesn’t want to make a big deal out of any of it. But there is just no way to not make a big deal about a baby.
This is not my baby, and I don’t know what it’s like for Alexis — who is stoic and seems the same as always, except with a baby inside of her — but the baby matters a lot to me. After the year I gave Alexis “UHF” I got my first boyfriend, and Alexis got her first boyfriend. Competitive as ever, I wanted my first boyfriend to also be my last boyfriend, because culture told me that that would be a win. But mine wasn’t, and hers wasn’t, and we both went to college and had other boyfriends, and we visited each other in college and met each other’s other boyfriends, and all the while my feeling was always, “Yes, you are Alexis’ boyfriend, but I am her PERSON.” And in that I was sure I would always win.
Because as we got older we got closer, by which I mean we fought about more serious things and both made the decision to keep addressing the serious things and then humbled ourselves and then each apologized and tried to change. By which I mean, we did change a little, but when you love someone unconditionally, the increments add up, and before you know it, all the painful arguments have shaped you, and who would you be without this other person? Alexis is the one who stayed, and I was the one who stayed, and I am too embarrassed to tell you how long it took me to understand that this was not a contest about who would stay the longest, or the most, or the best.
There was a time two or three years ago when I thought our differences were too great and that I couldn’t bend anymore, and that Alexis would no longer be my person. For months I was cold and didn’t offer any of myself to her. There was no way to not take this very seriously, I thought to myself, and I went about figuring out how to live my life estranged. Then Alexis bent, and I hadn’t expected that. Love found a new meaning. I thought, Love is not the staying, exactly, but the returning.
On the way to the hardware store, listening to “Hardware Store,” I thought about what a cool party trick it would be to know all the words to this song. If it ever happened to come on and you could sing all the words, for a minute or two, you’d have godlike status, and you would win. At the actual hardware store, I texted Alexis that Luke and I had just listened to “Hardware Store.”
“Hardware Store” came off the album “Poodle Hat,” which was the one that came out right after “Running With Scissors.” It was the summer before my senior year of high school, and Alexis and I drove off together to buy it, and then — this is her memory, not mine, but hers is better — we drove around listening to it. All that stands out in my mind from this day is that I thought “A Very Complicated Song” — a surprisingly multifaceted parody of “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne — was GENIUS. “He could have made it about JUST constipation, or being related to your girlfriend, or getting decapitated,” I thought, “But it’s more COMPLICATED than that. It’s about all THREE things.” What a clever, clever man.
By the way, Weird Al did go through a lot of drama — his life has been really quite tragic. It just happened after “Behind The Music” came out. In that same year, 2003, both his parents died unexpectedly of carbon monoxide poisoning in their home. He was on tour with “Poodle Hat” at the time — it was his worst-selling record in more than two decades. He did a show right after he got the news. On ESPN later he said, “Since my music had helped many of my fans through tough times, maybe it would work for me as well."
Just like the song, life is complicated. Like, really, really complicated. You never win all the way, or lose all the way, or grow up all the way, or stay a child. And while the shiny, new, non-serious version of oneself can appeal to a crowd of near-strangers, it’s the ugly, sad version that you have to bring out if you want to find your people. And love is a fucking mess. And there isn’t just one person. There is never just one person.
Alexis is bringing into the world a NEW PERSON. He will be her person. If this essay were neat and tidy, I would write here that he will not become her One And Only True Person; that our relationship will always be there, just as it is now. But of course, that’s dishonest. Trying to predict the future is, by nature, dishonest. It is merely another tool in a box of hopeless tools that make us feel safe, when nothing is and we never are.
This I will say, and it is honest: Alexis, my sister, is brave. She is having a baby. When she told me, I searched myself for the familiar jealousy and seething and itch to win, and I couldn’t find it.
At the hardware store, I went off to touch the doorknobs and text my sister that I’d just listened to “Hardware Store.”
Alexis replied, “Hardware Store is so good.” And then, “I want to learn the words.”
Learning the words to that song feels like a great idea for a project when we are together next week (because I have to go see my person having a baby; that doesn’t happen very often), but not together alone anymore. We can learn all those ridiculous words together. And then we can make a video, and then probably we will become famous.