June 28, 2017:

Herman sang, "Now ain't that just a little... a-bit better..."

To which, after a transparently theatrical attempt to appear lost in thought, she replied, "No. No, it isn't."

It's not clear what she was attempting to achieve. Was she deliberately teaching me that women are mercenaries, whose affections can be bought with flash? Or was she merely complaining that she didn't like contemporary pop for teenyboppers?

You can never say with her. She communicated poorly, and she habitually lied, so that each of her statements had to be parsed, as I'm parsing this one now. She lied so often that she couldn't keep them straight. So that today I don't know what she actually thought.

To be fair, it wasn't always literal dishonesty. More that she lived in her head, in her fantasy world, the outcome and the symptom of years of childhood abuse. It's possible she believed a fantasy explanation was just as valid as a literal one.

Whatevs. For me that song is forever about that one moment.