Yesterday, we were over playing at the Carl Sagans, and as usual, Mrs. Carl Sagan had her satellite tuned to Galaxy 80s. It's a radio station that plays all 80s, all the time, and it's quite a mixed bag of cool alternative stuff and crappy pop music -- one category of which sirmonkeypants listened to at the time, and the other category of which I listened to at the time, and I'll leave it to you to figure out which one of us, as 14-year-olds, preferred Debbie Gibson to The Smiths.

Anyway, the song "Hard For Me To Say I'm Sorry" by Chicago came on. It's a classic crap pop song; it was a pretty big hit at the time, I guess, but overall I find it rather forgettable and cheesy. But Captain Jelly Belly is really into learning song lyrics, and so asked me one of his favourite questions, "What is this song about?" So I told him that it was about saying sorry, He wanted to know who, exactly, was sorry. I told him, the guy who is singing the song. He wanted to know his name, so I told him it was Peter (and it is -- the lead singer of Chicago is Peter Cetera).

And then CJB wanted to know why, exactly, Peter was sorry. This kind of situation happens all the time, because CJB likes to really understand a song when he is going to be singing along, and anything other than The Wiggles seems to dissolve into an extensive discussion of adult human relationships. Usually we try to explain the song as simply as possible, like, "This song is about love," or "This song is about feeling happy," or "This song is about a girl named Stacy and her really hot mom." Often he will take these simple explanations at face value, but for some reason, he had a real thing about this Chicago song, and knowing that Peter Was Sorry was just not enough.

So I told CJB I wasn't sure exactly why, and CJB guessed that perhaps, Peter had accidentally taken the Buzz Lightyear belonging to someone else. I agreed that that was probably it, because that was the easy thing to do, and so began my descent into Lying Hell For Liars, because now, this story has spiraled out of control and won't quit. In CJB's world now -- after a combination of inventing details that I have agreed with, or having details supplied by myself out of frustration -- Peter took Andy's really cool talking Buzz Lightyear, but then he noticed that Andy was sad, and then he gave back the Buzz Lightyear and said he was Really Sorry. And then, because we require a happy ending, Peter's Mommy took him out to Al's Toy Barn where he got his own talking Buzz Lightyear.

CJB seriously cannot stop talking about this song, and this story, and is constantly asking me questions to fill in even more detail. The worst part is that he wants sirmonkeypants to download the song for him, the infamous song where Peter Takes Andy's Buzz Lightyear, and I'm worried that a) CJB will notice that there are not, in actuality, any references to Buzz Lightyear contained in "Hard For Me To Say I'm Sorry," and that b) I will have to listen to this song over and over for 50 times in a row, which may make me insane (although, I survived hearing it many, many times back in the 80s with most of my brain intact, and here, I give you all major blackmail material by mentioning that I actually owned the album, a fact that gives me nightmares today).

Didn't Dante write a story about this once?