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We Could All Die Any Day

Melissa Firman
4 min readJun 7, 2019

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In honor of Prince on his 61st birthday.

A version of this post was previously published April 28, 2016 on my blog.

It’s been seven days since the news broke and I’m still listening to Prince at top volume in the car, still singing at the top of my lungs about doves crying and horses running free. I’ve exhausted my inventory of appropriate-for-work purple clothing.

My kids are perplexed at this behavior. “So, when did you become so crazy about Prince?” they half-sneer, their teenage mortification on full display.

We see this attitude frequently, The Husband and I, whenever we give off any indication that we are … well, human. The eye-rolls when we kiss goodbye in the morning for a few seconds longer than usual with a sly slip of tongue or when we start dancing in the kitchen as our wedding song shuffles into queue on Spotify. To our offspring, we have no life besides folding laundry and cooking dinners that they dislike, and despite our assurances to the contrary, we never did. And we certainly have no idea what it’s like to be a teenager. Never were we caught up in the adolescent maelstrom of emotions and hormones and prehistoric jungle love.

My attempts at explaining my so-called sudden Prince obsession fall flat with my kids. Although I wouldn’t describe myself as a passionate fan, I have an…

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Melissa Firman
Melissa Firman

Written by Melissa Firman

Writes about books, GenX, politics, life. Currently working on a memoir. www.melissafirman.com

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