I’m writing about every song by They Might Be Giants. Equal parts: Fandom, Personal Reflections and Experimentation on what is tolerable the human reader. Like a negroni of Nerdom. First time here? Get the next one in your inbox.
Humans are very good at adapting to stress, physical/emotional pain, or difficult life situations. We deal with these things through new unconscious behaviors but also conscious choices to seek relief, also known as a Coping Mechanism. To me, Wearing A Raincoat is about the Maladaptive Coping Mechanisms1 which are the tools that become new problems and need their own coping tools. It’s a musical “If This, Then That, Then That, Then That, Then That.”
Help You Sleep
Many years ago, there was a period of time when my entire house was sleep deprived and in a cycle that felt impossible of which to break free.
When my kids were very little, our routine was to have dinner by 5PM and get the three youngest in bed for sleep no later 6pm. was a stay at home parent at this time and my afternoons with my youngest felt the only time I could relax for a moment. The hours after two of them got home from Kindergarten felt like a speed run for homework, playtime, making dinner, drawing baths, reading to them and singing each of them lullaby songs. My bedtime stayed the same but the extremely early bedtimes lead to mornings that began at 4AM. How did it get like that?
The birth of this cycle happened when one of my kids just started waking up like clockwork at 4 AM, demanding my attention. They were on the spectrum. The concept that everyone else was asleep and it is time to be quiet and sleeping was just not able to be grasped. Trying to enforce staying in bed was an utter act in futility. Such an attempt would lead to other siblings sharing the room to wake up as well. This would lead to the youngest stirring in bed, hearing people awake and coming out to see what’s going on.
Within a month’s time, I found myself waking up routinely at 4AM with three little ones, silently pouring cereal, putting on a cartoon, and trying desperately to keep them from waking up their oldest brother or their mom. ESPECIALLY their mom. Since so much of my attention revolved around managing their mom’s emotional reactions, ensuring she did not get woken up at 4AM was like ensuring I did not have a very bad day. Trying to keep all of the kids awake until 8pm was like a crazed science experience, testing the limits of a child’s mental ability and mine as they descended int tantrums, arguments, and pure defiance. It was easier for everyone if I sacrificed my sleep to keep this house of cards together.
My favorite lyric in the entire song is:
Sleeping is a gateway drug to being awake.
As a person in his is late 40’s, this resonates. Today, if I stay up past midnight, it takes me two sleeps to feel like I’m back on track again. I spend the next two days feeling completely wiped and unable to function and my best. The toll those sleep deprived years had on me 16 years ago would be devastating today. Honestly, it was probably devastating me to back then and I’ve blocked out the worst feelings of it. I do remember seeking relief through food. Especially buying and eating an entire pint of ice cream a few times per week as an escape. Which, in turn, led me to being a very unhealthy weight.
In those days, I felt the worst about myself physically and mentally. I think this cycle went on for nearly two years. Until we moved into a larger space and each kid could have their own bedroom, spaced out further from the each other.
A Friend to Talk You Down
A healthier mechanism would have been reaching out to a therapist for help—GOD I wish I had talked to therapist back then. I could have fast-tracked a better relationship with myself and got out of a bad situation with my marriage sooner, before it got worse. At the very least, I could have learned to lean on friends.
But the friends in Wearing A Raincoat aren’t the kind who talk you down. In the song, the friends are compared to being like the undead. They demand constant attention in the same way that a zombie has an insatiable hunger for brains. Once they have your attention, they use it to ask for more. When I hear that verse now, I don’t hear friends. I hear my house, back in the day, at 4AM.
So far, the album, The Spine, is circling around the same three subjects: our bodies betraying us, our minds being untrustworthy, and being prisoners of our present moment. Those sleepless two years contained all three of these elements. My body was sleep deprived and fueled by Ben & Jerry’s. My brain was trapped in a loop of solving problems created by previous solutions to problems. And the future where this was no longer happening was far out of my reach.
It did finally arrive. The kids started getting sleep, though it wouldn’t be until I left that marriage that I would get some sleep at last. That’s for a different song.
Question: Have you ever had a coping that needed its own coping mechanism?
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Maladaptive Coping Mechanism - refers to several types of counterproductive or ineffective behaviors used to manage stressful or unpleasant situations, such as aggressive behaviors and substance misuse. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK615373/)