Simply Irresistible

Last week, when we were driving home from picking up the kids from school, “Simply Irresistible” by Robert Palmer came on the radio. I looked out the window and smiled. Just before the song came on I had mentioned to my husband that I was feeling a little sad and missed my Dad. It had just been his birthday and the second anniversary of his death was approaching. Then the music began to play. I turned to my husband and said, “My Dad loved this song.” My husband replied, “I know. Me too.”

My father was a famous ladies man in his day. At my father’s funeral my cousins, all male, commented and laughed about how my father, Uncle John, had a keen eye for the ladies. When they were teenagers he was happy to have them bring their girlfriends down to our house by the beach. He had his favorites. He would also go to “Parents Without Partners” meetings in the 1970s and troll for dates. He enjoyed the single life.

I would sometimes come home from work or be watching TV, when I lived with my Dad, and I would hear blasting from the stereo upstairs, “She used to look good to me…but now I find her…simply irresistible…” It was my Dad playing my Robert Palmer album! That stereo that played Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and the greatest symphonies ever recorded was playing “Simply Irresistible.” I could hear my Dad singing along. Those that know him can only imagine. Remember my father was the epitome of the “college professor” complete with a corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows and a pipe. “Ah, Sally, those were the days,” he would say when I came up the stairs to see him. He had no regrets about his love life, that I could see or that he told of.

When “Simply Irresistible” comes on the radio I always smile and sometimes chuckle at my Dad. Singing full voice and owning that song, “She’s so fine…there’s no tellin’ where the money went…”  After all, he would know.