Mamma Don't Let Your Hippies Grow Up To Have Cataracts

This week I was getting ready to block 24 cataract extractions scheduled for a rainy Wednesday morning. One of the staff asked me what music I would like to have playing in the background. We usually put on some classical or an easy listening CD that one of the nurses ordered off the Oxygen network. It sets the mood in the hold area where the senior citizens are sedated while the local anesthetic is injected behind their eye prior to surgery. Being the smart-ass that I am I requested "In A Gadda Da Vida" by Iron Butterfly. I was stunned when my 68 year old cataract patient opened her eyes and said "That is one of my favorite songs, especially the 17 minute version with the long drum solo." It's cataract time for old hippies. Perhaps we stared too long into our Lava Lamps. The DJ's loved to play the 17 minute version because it was the only way they got a decent break. Rumor has it that the the original lyrics where suppose to be "In The Garden Of Eden" but the group was stoned and it came out "In A Gadda Da Vida".

Before the lyrics for every song ever written was available on-line, my friends and I spent hours trying to decipher the words of such classics as "The Theme From The Good The Bad And The Ugly" by Hugo Montenegro. For a few hours we repeated the song which really consists of a great musical score highlighted by a series of burps and grunts. But after playing it slow, then backwards we came to the consensus that the main lyric was the phrase "don't want no grapefruit". Even today no one can convince me any different. Rock on, Granny. With your new intra-ocular lens giving you 20/20 vision you can throw your granny glasses away and drive around all day with your turn signal on.