| Micheline used to come to our house and knock on our door.
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| My dad would answer and say, «What do you want, girl?"and she’d say, «Can I take a bath with Mark?»
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| My dad would say, «My son ain’t here,"send her home and shut the door and we’d
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| all laugh.
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| And Micheline would walk down the street glowing and smiling like she just got
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| Paul McCartney’s autograph.
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| Her brain worked a little slower than the others; |
| she wore thick-rimmed glasses.
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| She took a different bus to school than the other kids and was in different
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| kind of classes.
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| When she got older a neighborhood thug moved in with her and started taking her
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| welfare payments.
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| He took her down to the bank, helped her withdraw her savings that was put away
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| for her and he went off with it.
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| The cops caught up with him, he did a little time and cut to many years later:
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| He’s doing life in a Florida penitentiary with his father, both of them for
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| murder.
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| Micheline, Micheline. |
| Micheline, Micheline. |
| Micheline, Micheline, Micheline.
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| She wanted love like anyone else.
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| Micheline, Micheline, Micheline,
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| She had dreams like anyone else.
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| My friend Brett, my friend Brett, my friend Brett, my friend Brett,
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| he liked to play the guitar.
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| But he had an awkward way of playing barre chords with two fingers spreading
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| his index and middle fingers really far apart.
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| One day in band practice he dropped like a deer was shot and was flipping
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| around like a fish.
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| He had an aneurysm triggered by a nerve in his hand from the strain he was
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| putting on it.
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| I went to see him in Ohio; |
| he had a horseshoe shaped scar on his scalp and he
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| talked real slow.
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| We played pool like we did in our teens and his head was shaved and he still
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| wore bell-bottomed jeans.
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| In '99 I was on tour in Sweden when I called home
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| To tell my mom I got a part in a movie when she said «Mark, there’s something
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| that you need to know.»
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| «Brett died the other day, you really should send a letter to his mom and dad.»
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| And I got on my train in Malmo and looked out at the snow feeling somewhere
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| between happy and sad.
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| My friend Brett, my friend Brett. |
| My friend Brett, my friend Brett.
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| My friend Brett, my friend Brett, my friend Brett.
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| He had a wife and a son.
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| My friend Brett, my friend Brett, my friend Brett.
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| He just liked to play guitar and he never hurt anyone.
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| My grandma, my grandma, my grandma, my grandma, my grandma, my grandma.
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| Before she passed away we’d go and visit her at my aunt’s house when I was
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| small.
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| I couldn’t bear the shape she was in so at the top of the driveway I’d sit in
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| the car.
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| One day I was just fucking around when I put it in reverse and I was
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| free-falling.
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| I remember the car moving backwards; |
| my heart was beating and I blacked out.
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| Another car was coming down the street and I totalled them both and I got
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| knocked out.
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| My grandma, my grandma, my grandma, my grandma, my grandma, my grandma.
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| First time I met her, she lived in L.A.; |
| I think it was Huntington Park.
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| I made friends with a kid named Marceau and another kid named Cyrus Hunt.
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| We’d go downtown and get ice cream and feed french fries to the pigeons and
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| talk to the handicapped vets from Vietnam.
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| It was the first time I saw a hummingbird, or a palm tree, or a lizard.
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| Or saw an ocean, or heard David Bowie’s «Young Americans"and I saw the movie «Benji"in the theatre.
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| My grandma, my grandma. |
| My grandma, my grandma. |
| My grandma, my grandma,
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| my grandma.
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| I heard she had a pretty hard life.
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| But after her first husband passed away she met a man from California and he
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| treated her really nice.
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| My grandma, my grandma. |
| My grandma, my grandma. |
| My grandma, my grandma,
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| my grandma.
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| My grandma was diagnosed at 62.
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| Her kids stepped up to the plate for her and were there the whole way through. |