"A Little Soul" by Pulp

I think everyone's got that friend who has an amazing relationship with his or her parents. They never fight, they're best buddies that tell each other everything and they act like they're on the Family Feud every time they hang out. It's big dinners, spirited discussions and group hugs with them, always, and then you get to hear about it, possibly even with photographic evidence to back up their smiling, teary-eyed stories.

It's disgusting, isn't it?

I love my family, I do; they're all wonderful people and I know for a goddamned fact that I could have done so much worse. But we're a real family. Real, in the sense that my folks and I don't always get along. There's disappointment, there's anger, there's sulking, there's sadness. We love as much as we can, for as long as we can, but sometimes we all just revert back to our 14-year-old selves and start slamming doors and calling each other names to be regretted later.

But we press on. Fuck knows my family has been there for my worthless ass more times than I'd really care bring up in a public forum (there was a time when my Mother eschewed the usual phone greeting of "Hello?" when I called and simply answered the phone with, "How much?"). And, as I said, it could always be worse. I could have Girlfriend's family, which, no joke, make the clan in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre look like the Seavers from Growing Pains.

Real families have real problems. Way it is, way it always will be. Wouldn't change it, because it's what makes us, as a whole, who we are. And it makes the good times even more awesome.

Anyway, all of this is just a long winded introduction to Jarvis Cocker's ode to parental issues, entitled, "A Little Soul." Enjoy: