This one is more my brother's memory but I've heard it so often that I think of it as my own.
For a few years when I was in high school, there was a family in the neighborhood named Palmers. I don't have a clue as to the names of the parents and it's wholly unimportant but they had two sons who were, at least important to this anecdote. I don't recall much about the family other than I went over there with my brother a few times. If I were to choose a word to describe them I'd use "scatterbrained" for the dual purpose that it is a rather uncommon word these days and the fact that the shoe fit. Common sense was not their chief export.
Their older son (Chris) was roughly the same age as my brother, probably four-to-five years younger than me, and blissfully absorbed in the notion of fitting in. Age-wise, Chris was close to joining the ranks of Junior High School and was making an effort to fit in. Chris himself had a younger brother and this is where part of the memory gets shaky: I don't remember if it was Doug or Dudley. That really is not that funny of a question unless you know that whichever name it was not, was in fact the name of one of the family's dogs. You probably would not be surprised to know that, just as I don't know now, I then regularly scored low on properly identifying which was Doug and which was Dudley (I'd like to think Dudley was the dog, as no one in their right mind name a child Dudley – but this was the Palmers', mind you). My joke was the parents would yell out the back door, "Chris! Doug, Dudley! Muffin! Dinnertime!" and two boys and two dogs would come running (Muffin, for those keeping score, should be easily discernable).
Paula Abdul fits into the equation, but toward the end – right before you carry to the three, half the remainder and so on. She danced into the limelight in the late 1980s with Forever Your Girl and four #1 hit singles, none of which we'll worry about now. It was her second album – or her next to last studio album – that featured Promise of a New Day, a song I recall as syrupy and fluffy and, as the saying goes, bubblegum for the ears – in short, almost as enjoyable as generously applying foodstuff to the inner ear cavity.
Visits to the Palmer house were few and far between for me; my brother was a more everyday guest but in diminishing frequency. Toward the end of their brief stopover in the neighborhood, I think Chris was trying harder to fit in with the "cool" kids and began tuning out my brother. What is generally thought of as the last time both my brother and I were at the Palmer house, we discovered Chris wanted to stay inside and do "nothin'" except watch television. Music television, to be exact. As We didn't have Music Television and caught ourselves a few peaks of what we missing. As we left, Paula Abdul's video for Promise of a New Day was on, featuring Paula jumping out of a field or prancing across a cloudy sky. As long as she wasn't dancing about the joys of Diet Coke.
And that was our brief encounter with Music Television. Also with the Palmers – my brother lamented that his lasting memory of the family was such an upbeat, annoyingly positive song.
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The Promise of a New Day
(Paula Abdul/Peter Lord/Sandra St. Victor/V. Jeffrey Smith)
Paula Abdul
From the album Spellbound
1991
Eagle's calling
And he's calling your name
Tides are turning
Bringing winds of change
Why do I feel this way
The promise of a new day
Chorus:
The promise
The promise of a new day
As thru time
The earth moves
Under my feet
One step closer
To make love complete
What has the final say
The promise of a new day
Chorus x2
And so time over time
What will change the world
No one knows
So the only promise
Is a day to live, to give
And share with one another
See the wisdom from mistakes in our past
Hear the younger generation ask
Why do I feel this way
The promise of a new day
Chorus x2
And so time over time
What will change the world
No one knows
So the only promise
Is a day to live, to give
And share with one another
