Take It Easy

Please watch this video of The Eagles performing Take It Easy in 1976, if only to be thankful we are nearly 40 years removed from the fashion of the '70s.

A few weeks back, our family made a trip to Seattle for a couldn't-miss wedding. We'd been planning on attending this wedding for months, so we knew the girls would miss three days of school. Totally worth it, right?

Missing three days of school isn't a big deal ... unless you're in 7th grade, where there's a new math concept introduced daily, and you're trying to differentiate between the Sunnis and the Shiites in social studies (and let's face it: one tiny spelling error and you're in trouble in that particular subject), not to mention conjugating verbs -- in Spanish.

And you're still trying to catch up on work you missed before the trip after a bout with a delightful virus/strep throat combo. And all the other fun stuff that comes with being a 7th grade girl, like other 7th grade girls.

So as I was taking one stressed out kiddo to school for yet another early-morning make-up test session, the song "Take It Easy" from The Eagles came on the radio. Now, ignore for a moment that Glenn Frye was obviously having some lady troubles (though things seemed to be looking up in Winslow, Arizona) and tell me if these lyrics don't strike a chord (haha, pun.):

Take it easy, take it easy.
Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.
Lighten up while you still can, don't even try to understand.
Just find a place to take your stand, and take it easy.

Leave it to one of the rock super-groups of the '70s to say much more eloquently what I'd been trying to tell her that morning:

Settle down. Take a deep breath. Trust me, in a couple of weeks you'll be all caught up. Instead of worrying about what makes other girls act mean, decide how you can be kind.One day you'll look back, and you'll remember how much fun you had in Seattle, but you won't care how tricky it was to master integers. One day soon you'll dream of the day when two negatives made a positive, and I don't just mean in math.

With all due respect to Mr. Frye, I changed just one line to the song for my purposes:

We may lose, and we may win,
But we will never be here again.
It all turns out okay in the end,
So take it easy.

A good message for kids and adults alike, don't you think?