“When it’s too tough for you, it’s just right for me.”
Words I was raised on.
My big brother.
He was the star high school player and I was a slow eighty-pound guard on our Pee Wee Pop Warner football team on Tachikawa Air Force Base.
After school, I would head to football practice as did my big brother Ed. When mom would make her respective stops to pick us up at our practice sites, we would pile in and listen to her describe the delicious dinner she made for us.
Torture.
As we pulled into our driveway, I picked up my helmet and strapped it on.
I knew what came next.
I was not going to get my dinner until I either:
- knocked my brother on his ass
- hit him so hard, he hit me back hard
- hit him hard several times in a row
- made him laugh at my futility
This nightly ritual went on for three years.
On Saturdays, I thought I was hot shit because Ed let me hang out with him at the base gymnasium. All of his high school football teammates would show up with their younger brothers to lift weights and it didn’t take long for Ed to arrange a boxing tournament of sorts, but I called it win-or-you-need-to-find-a-way-home-fifty-miles-away.
He told me (and I believed it like the gospel) that if I didn’t “deliver pain” and win every single bout, I would have to find my own way home.
And I believed him.
Say what you want, I beat the same opponents for the base championship while winning three straight MVPs.
I wish I would have spent more time with my brother before he left the house, but I have used his expression many times over the years and now, here are the lyrics to the funky song I wrote with his sage advice in mind:
Verse I
You’re shady
But in a good way
A lady
In all the bad ways
Enchanting
With fire in your eyes
When I get next to you
That’s when I realize
Chorus
That when it’s too tough for you
It’s just right for me
When it’s too tough for you
It’s just right for me
Verse II
I caught it
The lifeline that you threw me
The anchor was attached
Took me down, down, down
Let’s start again
On the count of three
Chorus
‘Cuz when it’s too tough for you
It’s just right for me
When it’s too tough for you
It’s just right for me
Verse III
Insatiable
Girl you can’t get enough
When I get next to you
You don’t seem so tough
Let’s start again
On the count of three
Chorus
And when it’s too tough for you
It’s just right for me
When it’s too tough for you
It’s just right for me
Stay well.
