Conceptualized:  August 2009

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This song was written based on a strange occurrence I had on a bus coming back from shopping.  I was conceptualizing the first little ideas of this song in my notebook as the bus was driving east down Colorado Avenue when the bus driver decided to stop.  I was unsure why.  The rest of this story is located at the bottom of this post, so as not to spoil the moral of the song lyrics you are about to read…

They say that the good die young

And I can sort of see just where they get that from

The good people always try to busy themselves

With trying to serve a purpose for somebody else

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And serving a purpose and working hard

Makes the time fly by if you try to do your part

And when you work hard rather than acting like a coward,

Then the months go by in days, and the days go by in hours

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So they good may live to be like ninety years old

But to them, it’ll only seem like a small fraction of those

It’s possible to be ninety and still be young,

It’s possible to be sixteen and be unsung

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It’s all in your mindset how old you are

So just ignore it and make it a point to do your part

You can strive to do your best, no matter how old

Like a piece of bread from years a go who hasn’t spawned mold

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Chords:

Stanzas 1 and 4:

C Bb7

F(A) Ab6

C G

F C

Stanzas 2 and 3:

C Bb

F(A) Ab6

C G

Abmaj7 Bb

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…I was writing in my notebook, how time doesn’t really matter to the people who do really matter.  To the people who achieve great things in the world, it doesn’t matter how much time is left, in terms of the task at hand AND in terms of their lifespan.  And I was writing this, the bus stopped.  I watched the bus driver get up off of his seat, walk out of the bus door on the right, and cross the street to the left in front of the parked bus.

To where, you ask?

To the convenience store on the street corner to the left of the bus.

I’m not sure if it was legal for him to decide to park the bus, with transient passengers, just to go grab a cup of coffee.  But one thing I WAS pretty sure of:

I was being tested.

I was being tested of how well I would heed what I had written in my notebook:  If time was not an issue to those who were good people in the world, was I one of those good people?  If I was one of those people, then how could I let myself become impatient with the bus driver going into this convenience store?

So I continued writing my ideas for this song.  I looked up every 20 seconds or so, and tried to spot the bus driver coming out of the convenience store.  I didn’t.  But at one point when I looked up, I saw the bus driver come from my RIGHT and get on the bus.

What?!  He came from the RIGHT.  The convenience store is on the LEFT.

Maybe this was no ordinary bus driver.

I think it’s incredibly creepy how I felt I was being tested by mother nature AND at the same time, the bus driver somehow appeared on the opposite side of the bus.  It was one of those terribly magical coincidences that may inch me somewhat closer in believing in something supernatural.  However, I remain pretty much a total atheist.