Pipe Dream or Nightmare?

So we were in the car last weekend, listening to a song David wanted to play for me and the kids. It’s called “Spanish Pipedream” written by John Prine and performed by the Avett Brothers. Its not a particularly kid-appropriate song, but I only learned that just now when I googled the lyrics, which make it clear the song is actually about falling in love with a "topless lady" who is "on the road to alcohol" but you can't really understand what the hell those Southerners are saying until the chorus which is really funny and G-rated and it goes like this:

Blow up your TV

Throw away your papers

Move to the country

And build us a home

Plant a little garden

Eat a lot of peaches

Try to find Jesus

On our own

I said, “Instead of a pipe dream, this sounds like a nightmare, at least where Primo is concerned.”

Primo smiled, but he didn’t understand, “What?”

“What would you do if we blew up our TV, throw away all the papers you draw on, and moved to the country?”

“I wouldn’t like it at all!”

“I know. And what if we planted a little garden and made you eat a lot of peaches?”

“YUCK!” he yelled. As you may recall, Primo has a serious, abiding aversion to fruit of all kinds. It literally makes him gag, the way a ball of dog shit would make most people dry heave.

“And you can’t find Jesus!” he exclaimed, getting into the joke now, “because he’s dead!”

I could not keep from laughing. Of course he imagined that the task was to try and locate Jesus in person, a la

Where’s Waldo? What on earth would lead him to believe any different?

So I explained that the singers actually meant that they would try to find the spirit of Jesus, but this confused him even more, because of the concept of the Holy Spirit which he doesn’t fully grasp. So I said they were trying to act like Jesus, kind and forgiving and loving and that seemed to make sense to him.

“So that part of the dream is not so bad,” I said.

“Yeah,” he agrees, “But the peaches part is really bad. That IS my nightmare.”