Long ago and far away,
In
a land that time forgot,
Before the days of Dylan,
Or the dawn of
Camelot.
There
lived a race of innocents,
And they were you and me,
Long ago and far
away
In the Land That Made Me Me .
For
Ike was in the White House
In that land where we were born,
Where navels
were for oranges,
And Peyton
Place was porn.
We
learned to gut a muffler,
We washed our hair at dawn,
We spread our
crinolines to dry
In circles on the lawn.
We
longed for love & romance,
And waited for our Prince,
And Eddie
Fisher married Liz,
And no one's seen him since.
We
danced to "Little Darlin",
And Sang to "Stagger Lee"
And cried for Buddy
Holly
In the Land That Made Me Me .
Only
girls wore earrings then,
And 3 was one too many,
And only boys wore
flat-top cuts,
Except for Jean McKinney.
And
only in our wildest dreams
Did we expect to see
A boy named George with
Lipstick,
In the Land That Made Me Me .
We
fell for Frankie Avalon,
Annette was oh, so nice,
And when they made a
movie,
They never made it twice.
We
didn't have a Star Trek Five,
Or Psycho Two & Three,
Or Rocky-Rambo
Twenty
In the Land That Made Me Me .
Miss
Kitty had a heart of gold,
And Chester had a limp,
And Reagan was a
Democrat
Whose co-star was a chimp.
We
had a Mr. Wizard,
But not a Mr. T,
And Oprah couldn't talk yet
In
the Land That Made Me Me .
We
had our share of heroes,
We never thought they'd go,
At least not Bobby
Darin,
Or Marilyn Monroe.
For
youth was still eternal,
And life was yet to be,
And Elvis was forever
In the Land That Made Me Me .
We'd
never seen the rock band
That was Grateful to be Dead,
And Airplanes
weren't named Jefferson ,
And Zeppelins
were not Led.
And
Beatles lived in gardens then,
And Monkees lived in trees,
Madonna was a
virgin
In the Land That Made Me Me .
We'd
never heard of microwaves,
Or telephones in cars,
And babies might be
bottle-fed,
But they weren't grown in jars.
And
pumping iron got wrinkles out,
And "gay" meant fancy-free,
And dorms
were never coed
In the Land That Made Me Me .
We
hadn't seen enough of jets
To talk about the lag,
And microchips were
what was left
At the bottom of the bag.
And
Hardware was a box of nails,
And bytes came from a flea,
And rocket
ships were fiction
In the Land That Made Me Me .
Buicks
came with portholes,
And side shows came with freaks,
And bathing suits
came big enough
To cover both your cheeks.
And
Coke came just in bottles,
And skirts came to the knee,
And Castro came
to power
In the Land That Made Me Me .
We
had no Crest with Fluoride,
We had no Hill Street Blues,
We all wore
superstructure bras
Designed by Howard Hughes.
We
had no patterned pantyhose
Or Lipton herbal tea
Or prime-time ads for
condoms
In the Land That Made Me Me .
There
were no golden arches,
No Perrier to chill,
And fish were not called
Wanda,
And cats were not called Bill.
And
middle-aged was 35
And old was forty-three,
And ancient was our parents
In the Land That Made Me Me .
But
all things have a season,
Or so we've heard them say,
And now instead of
Maybelline
We swear by Retin-A.
And
they send us invitations
To join AARP,
We've come a long way, baby,
From the Land That Made Me Me .
So
now we face a brave new world
In slightly larger jeans,
And wonder why
they're using
Smaller print in magazines.
And
we tell our children's children
Of the way it used to be,
Long ago and
far away
In the Land That Made Me Me