It was the summer between sixth and seventh grade. I had just gotten home from a Little League game which I pitched and we won. I walked up to my room and the new telephone that my parents had just hooked up for me rang its old-style ring like a bell. I picked up the phone and heard the song Carly Simon You’re So Vain playing from beginning to end with the person on the other end hanging up, evidenced by the click and dial tone. I smiled as I put my new beige phone back on its receiver. I was twelve and did not know what ‘vain’ meant yet and in my foolishness thought it was a compliment:)
Later that summer I was at our school camping weekend to end the year and these two girls kept singing Carly Simon You’re So Vain every time they passed me in a chorus. I again smiled every time just fueling them even more. Finally, one of them came up to me and told me the other one had played Carly Simon You’re So Vain on the phone to me. I asked her to thank her friend and smiled, still clueless. She explained to me with fire in her eyes “Vain is not a compliment, it means you are a jerk!”
“Jerk? Really? Why am I a jerk?”
“Because Mary is your girlfriend and you are going to the dance with Dana! Jerk!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t your remember when Bryan asked Mary to go out with you in January on the playground at lunch-time?”
It took a minute but I remembered something like that happening in what seemed like such a long time ago at that point. “Oh yeah, I remember, tell her I am sorry that I forgot all about that.”
Since that day every time I have heard this song I think of that Saturday afternoon phone call that I thought was a compliment but learned later that vanity is not something that we aspire to achieve.
Carly Simon You’re So Vain Music Video
I really like the video of Carly Simon You’re So Vain they made for this and the remix.