Amy Lu's View

I think we occasionally had to do tug of wars in elementary school. I don’t think I liked it. 

I don’t clearly remember because it would have been a long time ago, and if it did happen, it didn’t happen with the frequency or terror of volleyball (which also lasted through high school). Maybe I just saw enough movies with tug of war scenes that I think I actually participated in them. 

I even think my dad might have participated in community tug of wars, but again, that may just be a memory of a movie. 

What I do know, on this Tug of War Day, is that as a teenager I intently listened to Paul McCartney’s album “Tug of War.” 

The album came out in 1982, but I probably didn’t hear it until 1985ish, after I became a huge Paul fan because of his duet “Say, Say, Say” with Michael Jackson. I think I checked the record out (multiple times) from the Eau Claire public library. 

The album is probably most notable for the song “Here Today,” Paul’s beautiful tribute to John Lennon. It also has “Take it Away” which I always loved and I can still remember hearing on the radio one morning while getting ready for school in my very orange bedroom. I’m pretty sure “Take it Away” introduced me to the word “impresario,” although in a pre-internet world it was years before I figured out what the word was and what it meant. 

Thinking about this song and album encouraged me to finally crack open the copy of the book “The Lyrics” by Paul that I received as a much appreciated Christmas gift from my sister-in-law. Luckily, “Tug of War” was included in the book. Paul’s big insight was that many people thought the song was about his relationship with John, and although he wasn’t thinking about that when he wrote it, he could certainly see how people thought that, especially because of the lyric “But with one thing and another we were trying to outscore each other in a tug of war.” 

The song “Tug of War” strikes me as quintessential Paul–beautiful and goofy and affecting. When Paul sings “In the years to come, they may discover, what the air we breathe and the life we lead are all about,” I’m all at once that young person filled with optimism and the much older person who still wants to be optimistic but thinking out how in all the years that have come since I first heard this song, they/we/I really haven’t figured out very much. (I also think about how we knew/know what air is all about so that’s a pretty silly line. For me, being a Paul fan is a constant tug of war between thinking “Oh my god this song, his voice, is so beautiful” and “Ouch, that lyric is cringey.”)

It may seem surprising that I’m writing about Tug of War Day, but today didn’t give me much to work with. Presidents’ Day was way too hard. I’m not interested in furniture sales right now, and the whole thought of the upcoming presidential election fills me with terror. And maybe hope. But back to terror. 

Maybe there is a connection between Tug of War Day and Presidents’ Day after all.