We Didn't Start The Fire 🔥🔥🔥

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Loud_Flatworm_4146@reddit

I thought that was the point of the song lol. Human history is a shitshow and as long as humans are around, it'll be a shitshow. We're just in the latest phase where a lot has improved but there's also a lot of uncertainty. I thought it was also a great way to explain the chaos of the 20th century, a century like no other in human history due to the rapid changes in technology ramping up said shitshow.

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YouAreNotBook@reddit

Just a quick thank you for quoting one of my favorite Billy songs (and a deep cut at that) in the text of your post.

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bassman314@reddit

Stormfront was the first tape I bought with my own money.

I remember sitting down with my dad and literally asking him about every thing. Who was Doris Day? What is Payolla? Etc.

He has always been the type to sit and answer our questions, even when it was obvious he’d rather watch whatever was on TV….

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Taanistat@reddit

Side note: Stormfront is an excellent album.

My dad bought it around release and the only song I knew before him getting it was "We didn't start the fire" because it played 30 times per day on every radio station. But, from him frequently playing it I ended up loving every song. My favorite will always be "The Downeaster ' Alexa". Somehow that song about the dieing family business fisherman tradition of New England gripped 8 year old me. Leningrad is a close second.

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lost_horizons@reddit

Never listened to a Billy Joel album, just the main hits. Will have to look into this.

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AdventureSphere@reddit

The Stranger is his magnum opus. One of the best albums ever made.

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jupitergal23@reddit

Storm Front is fantastic, you won't regret it.

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Garf_artfunkle@reddit

Yeah I think my favorite Billy Joel song is the one about gentrification and fishery collapse, and I'm not joking in the slightest. Damn near shot out of my seat when it popped up in The Hangover 2 of all places.

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JayRay_44@reddit

Agree. Storm Front is a great album. I had a thing for Billy Joel as a kid but my favorite album of the time was the Russian live album. I still remember getting it on CASSETTE back in like ‘87 and I still love “Goodnight Saigon” and “Big Man on Mulberry Street” because of that album. Funny how the music we enjoyed as a kid sticks with us even if we didn’t fully understand the meaning it at the time.

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jupitergal23@reddit

Downeaster Alexa is wonderful.

I remember when the album came out Billy went on the Rosie O'Donnell show and she asked him to play that song instead of We Didn't Start The Fire because she loved it so much. I was just thrilled that someone else loved it as much as I did.

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burjja@reddit

Is there a name for a personal Mandela Effect or do we just called it middle age? I kid because it happens to all of us. Album came out in 89. He put out another album before her show started in 96. It's possible he went on a different show in 89/90, but more likely you're correctly remembering Rosie. They just happened to be discussing that album rather than discussing it as his latest album.

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bassman314@reddit

That and Leningrad were always my favorite.

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ScreenTricky4257@reddit

Somehow that song about the dieing family business fisherman tradition of New England

Long Island. Where Joel is from. See also "The Ballad of Billy the Kid." ("From a town known as Oyster Bay, Long Island..."

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emptybeetoo@reddit

Storm Front is the Billy Joel album. Stormfront is a much more problematic name.

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bassman314@reddit

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Whatever could you be talking about???

Thanks for pointing it out!

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VampireOnHoyt@reddit

I asked the same questions! I was not prepared to find out what thalidomide was as a seven-year-old.

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Salt_Sir2599@reddit

What’s thalidomide ?

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Left_Interaction_288@reddit

A very effective anti nausea drug which was promoted and widely prescribed to treat morning sickness during pregnancy. But which caused babies to be born without limbs.

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bassman314@reddit

It's also a very early win for either the newly formed-FDA or else the organization that was the precursor.

The scientist who reviewed the application for the US essentially had the ick about some of the European reports and refused to certify it for use in the US without further testing. The decision stood and she was lambasted as it was a VERY effective drug for treating one of the worst parts of pregnancy.

Then the kids without arms started showing up.

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Salt_Sir2599@reddit

Ok thanks. That’s horrible. I didn’t research the song I was really good at mumbling the parts I didn’t know.

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iwantmy-2dollars@reddit

Call the Midwife does a good story arc on this, it was devastating.

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Alarming_Cat_2946@reddit

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zombie_overlord@reddit

We did a project about it in 8th grade and had to pick one of the lyrics out if a hat and do an oral report on it. It was a fun project. I picked the Cola Wars.

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-something-clever-@reddit

We did too. I picked the Mafia.

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balding_git@reddit

the space monkey mafia?

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autopilot_fail@reddit

In 10th grade History, we had to pick a verse, write a report on it, and then write our own verse for "our era". Probably the most memorable project of my academic career.

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N0toftheLethani@reddit

I did the same thing and I dressed up as JFK “blown away”….it wasn’t as appreciated as 9th grade me thought it would be.

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zeravlaf478@reddit

Same... I got Disneyland.

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PlantedinCA@reddit

Same here.

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greenwhiteredblack@reddit

That's the role I try to fill for my kids. Whatever I don't know, we look up together and cross reference sources

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madsci@reddit

I still use the lyrics of that song to mentally arrange those events in proper order. Roughly, anyway. The problem is that I have trouble jumping to an arbitrary place in the song and have to mentally do the whole chorus to get to the next verse.

There have also been some good follow-on versions. I remember one pretty good one that just ended with "2020 gets its own song..."

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ScreenTricky4257@reddit

First CD I ever owned. I still have WDSTF memorized.

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junepath@reddit

Seventh grade social studies was literally just dissecting this song point by point.

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--Citation-Needed--@reddit

I had that same conversation! I was surprised there were a couple my dad didn’t know. He’s a year older than Billy Joel.

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BichezNCake@reddit

That whole argument could have been as short as the line “It was always burning since the world's been turning.”

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MarkyGalore@reddit

Yeah, I'm not sure who that guy thought he was writing to. It reminds me of all these youtube videos that are something like Jurassic World Ending Explained. Was there confusion?

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_Xee@reddit

Maybe he educated some people who only remembered "We didn't start the fire! nanana nana na, nanana nana na!"

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HotTubSexVirgin22@reddit

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WillowIntrepid@reddit

I love that song. Billy Joel in general but not so much his new stuff.

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NW_Forester@reddit

boomers may not have started the fire but it was basically near dead embers when they too control and they decided to stoke that fucker up.

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SledgeH4mmer@reddit

Yeah things were much better in the days of WW2.

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dksdragon43@reddit

You should learn what boomer refers to lol

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SledgeH4mmer@reddit

Uhm, you do realize that boomers were literally born right as WW2 was wrapping up? Of course then there was the Korean war and Vietnam. The good old days were everything was perfect . . . /s

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Bad-Moon-Rising@reddit

I read an editorial about the Fall Out Boy version that came out a couple of years ago. There were a lot of critiques that the events mentioned weren't in chronological order like the original. The person writing said that the reason is obviously so the song would flow and fit together with the music, but that's how all of those events are to us. So many things all the time, there is no timeline, it's all jumbled up and we would struggle to put it in chronological anyways.

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Ok_Philosopher_1313@reddit

Sounds like an excuse. I can't listen to their version, the out of order part bugs the shit out of me.

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Brave_Cranberry1065@reddit

I like it better than the original.

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ohmbrew@reddit

I sang this song in 4th grade for the school talent show. I was a terrible singer, but I knew all the words by heart. Didn't know what 69% of them referred to tho haha

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cheerful_cynic@reddit

Memorized the nations of the world the second it came out lol

Also that McDonald's menu song, that got sent out in the Sunday ads with a paper 45 record

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rob132@reddit

I get through about as much of the end of the world as we know it as Tommy boy did.

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Humanity_NotAFan@reddit

LEONARD BERNSTEIN

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FoppyRETURNS@reddit (OP)

Legend.

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vitaoptima@reddit

Yessss, this what I always say. People think the world just turned to shit. No, my friend, it's always been shit.

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laurcar@reddit

Moon shot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock.

The next lines are -

Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airlines, Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan.

That stuff feels pretty damn heavy and we are still dealing with it in 2026.

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arrakiswitch@reddit

SpaceMonkeyMafia was my first online handle.

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FoppyRETURNS@reddit (OP)

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willows_edge@reddit

It sure as fuck wasn't utopia when my brother wouldn't stop playing that song on repeat for days on end. Only reason he stopped is we stole the tape.

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DefinitionSuperb1110@reddit

I heard that fuckass Fall Out Boy "sequel" song when I was at the dispensary last week.

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Risikio@reddit

This song is essentially the Boomer's response when their generation was accused of making the world a horrible place dedicated to the obsessive pursuit of money and greed.

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feldomatic@reddit

Fallout boy did a bitchin update to this perpetually relevant banger.

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Lebowski304@reddit

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JusticeFrankMurphy@reddit

Yes and no. There are some times in history that are a lot worse than others (I think it's safe to say that the 1940's were much bloodier and more violent than the 1980's, for example). But the problem is that we won't know for sure until decades after the fact.

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18randomcharacters@reddit

I mean the generations before us very very clearly did crank up the fire. They may not have started it but boy did they make it worse

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cobalt-radiant@reddit

Every generation has done things to crank up the fire, but that's the point. That's how it goes. It's not unique to the last generation. It's been burning since the world's been turning.

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christhomasburns@reddit

It is ironic for a Baby Boomer to be claiming "we've been trying to fight it"

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Hot-Spare5735@reddit

Baby Boomers were both Vietnam Soldiers and Hippies protesting the war. They were a complicated mix in their youth. Many were fighting for a better world.

The Reagan Era kind of ruined everything. We did have that brief period from 1989-2001 where we thought maybe we were actually on the right track.

That's all over though. The world is burning and turning bright and fast.

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AdRadiant9379@reddit

Especially events like removing silver from currency in the 60’s and ending the gold standard in the 70’s. That hurt purchasing for all the generations to come, and it is not getting better as evidenced by extreme increases in cost of living.

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lsp2005@reddit

They fanned the flames.

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Adrasteia-One@reddit

This is what I'd agree with. It's like we (collectively) really don't learn throughout time.

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PistolGrace@reddit

That's very true. There's a reason why I don't talk to my parents anymore.

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bloomdecay@reddit

I loved this song so much, and then when I went to Space Camp in the 6th grade, they had a laser light show in the planetarium set to it, that the adults called "a history lesson." Everyone was embarrassed about how much they enjoyed it, and when the instructor said "who wants another history lesson" there was at first mumbling then a burst of applause and yeses.

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eatyourface8335@reddit

Didn’t Ryan start the fire?

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LucMorningstar24601@reddit

Mr. Fire Guy

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Alarming_Cat_2946@reddit

Ry-an started the fi-YA!

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username__0000@reddit

Haha. Yes!!

I was gonna say it but I knew with 13 comments, and looking at the sub it was - it was here already.

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OtisPimpBoot@reddit

Exactly the same

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Easternshoremouth@reddit

Yep, that crazy sonofabitch did it. …again!!

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somecoolname42@reddit

Shit is better now than the 90s, people just don't have a frame of reference. They're adults dealing with shit full on. Its different than a paper route after school and your only fear is getting cought smoking weed or fucking you girlfriend. But it's better now. Do I miss my high school body and it's abilities. Sure, I'd love to do some light parkor and play some hacky sack. But I don't want to go back to no internet and less medical advancements. I don't want 21 inch TV and having to work half a day to afford music I might not like. I don't want my gay friends to be that afraid again. I don't want to not be able to get thai or indian food. It was OK, but I don't want to go back.

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ImightHaveMissed@reddit

Fallout boy’s version rips

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this_knee@reddit

Exactly. It’s always been terrible. The reasons for it being terrible still the same.

Don’t try to change it.

It’s gonna always be that way.

You didn’t start this and you ain’t stopping it.

No, go away and just go back to making a sandwich and my chic-fil-a.

/s

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Chick-fil-A_spellbot@reddit

It looks as though you may have spelled "Chick-fil-A" incorrectly. No worries, it happens to the best of us!

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TMore108@reddit

The boomer national anthem

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Status-Hovercraft784@reddit

OMG for sure.

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Jonestown_Juice@reddit

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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djsynrgy@reddit

The more things same, the more they change the stay.

The things the more, the same stay they more change.

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Status-Hovercraft784@reddit

I want to memorize this verbatim, particularly the first line.

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Jonestown_Juice@reddit

Well said.

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JB_v1@reddit

In college I did an essay on this song. I learned more history than I expected to, and some of the stuff seemed pretty random to me at the time (1998). Now I see that history, as viewed through one person's eyes, can be pretty fricken random.

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PotentialPlum4945@reddit

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Hard disagree. I'll get back to you if I can ever afford a home, a new used car, or Jesus... when I can live in a world that isn't on the verge of ecological collapse.

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nzungu69@reddit

ok but the piano man was oblivious in a gay bar.

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--Citation-Needed--@reddit

Just Paul and davey

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nzungu69@reddit

and the barman plying him with free drinks 😉

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djsynrgy@reddit

Drink tickets (free drinks,) are a common arrangement with entertainers at any venue with a bar.

And if the turnout is low, they are sometimes the sum total of the entertainer's "pay" for the evening.

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nzungu69@reddit

Now John at the bar is a friend of mine

He gets me my drinks for free

And he's quick with a joke or to light up your smoke

But there's some place that he'd rather be

He says, "Bill, I believe this is killing me"

As the smile ran away from his face

"Well, I'm sure that I could be a movie star

If I could get out of this place"

certified theatre kid. probably had dreams of starring in musicals.

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lost_horizons@reddit

Married to “the navy” for life lol

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Zucc@reddit

I dunno man, the 90s were pretty freaking great.

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Entire-Order3464@reddit

Except boomers did start the fire. There was a brief flicker of time where things were getting legitimately better. Then boomers killed all of that.

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TickleWitch@reddit

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PistolGrace@reddit

The Me Generation strikes again. I don't talk to my parents and am hoping for their obituary soon. Both are horrible people in different ways.

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Entire-Order3464@reddit

My dad is great. But I don't talk to my mom.

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zoosha2curtaincall@reddit

He’s said this. One of his roadies or session guys or something said to him that he was lucky to grow up in the Fifties when everything was simple and easy. Billy Joel was like “what are you talking about?!?” and started listing all the crazy things going on then. And the song came from that.

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maggie320@reddit

There’s a podcast Twisted History, it’s by a Barstool guy, but some of the topics are awesome. They did like a three part one dissecting everything mentioned in this song. It is a great listen.

I did used to think it was “Bob Dole, Budapest” instead of “Bardot, Budapest”.

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PlantedinCA@reddit

Who did the We Didn’t Start the Fire research project in class. I had this one twice - we needed to research one of the things mentioned in this song and do an oral presentation.

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Peanut083@reddit

Story time!

One evening, I put on a family load of washing, but then got busy doing other chores and cooking dinner. I asked my older son to put the washing in the dryer so we’d all have dry clothes to wear the next day. I heard the dryer working, so assumed my son had done as asked.

Fast forward to the next morning. My younger son and I had to go to an appointment fairly early, and boy, wasn’t I confused when there were no clothes in the dryer. I woke my older son up to ask “WTH, dude?!” He had put his pyjamas in the dryer and nothing else. Thankfully, my younger son and I were able to scrounge up something to wear.

While we were driving to the appointment, ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ started playing. As soon as the name of the song came up on the car display, my son sang “ didn’t start the dryer”. It happened a good 18 months ago, and my younger son and I still crack up laughing over that. 🤣

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