2. The Knife in the Foxhole: “Found Out About You” – Gin Blossoms’ Jangly Sounds of Betrayal

Elaina takes you on a nostalgic '90s journey. She explores the hidden pain behind the Gin Blossoms' "Found Out About You," her high school tennis pep rally betrayal and the impact of public humiliation. As a divorced single parent, Elaina delves into overcoming challenges, drawing unexpected parallels to a Gollum scene in "The Lord of the Rings,” addressing unresolved pain and betrayal, and encouraging self-reflection. “Your ’90s Are Showing” Dramatic Coffeehouse Reading of Lyrics dives into Del Amitri's "Always the Last to Know," offering empathy for unexpected heartbreak. Plus, don’t miss ’90s Troubadour trivia!

Thank you for listening, and don’t forget to shine bright!

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About the host: Elaina Satti is a lover of the '90s living in Rhode Island, USA, the smallest state with the biggest heart, and she is in fact a divorced single parent living her best "now what?" exploring the journey of "what's next" – with coffee.

Transcript

Hey everyone. This is Elaina with your '90s are showing. Thanks for joining me again. You're back. It makes me blush. Thanks so much. We are going to dive into a '90s lyric. This is “My So-Called '90s Lyrics.” How about the Gin Blossoms right? junior prom I was tanning in a tanning bed because that's what you do. You take the whole day off for beautification, like Queen Esther, and I am tanning hearing “Found Out About You.” Okay, a classic Gin Blossoms song. I believe it's around, you know, when that was playing around ‘95. And I'm just going to read it to you. Okay, I'm just going to do some '90s Coffee Shop interpretation for you. “All last summer/ In case you don't recall./ I was yours and you were mine. Forget at all. Is there a line that I could write that’s sad enough to make you cry? And all the lines you wrote to me were lies?”

Let's talk a little bit about ’90s lyrics and the theme of betrayal. Yes, we're getting into it: the knife in the foxhole. But it wouldn't be complete without a high school story from the '90s. We're gonna get into all of it. The Gin Blossoms though. They go a little bit further, that jangly rock.It really hides some dark lyrics, some betrayal. You can hear the pain coming through. Another of the lyrics says, “Months roll past, the love that you struck dead. Did you love me only in my head? The things you said and did to me. They seem to come so easily./ The love I thought I'd won. You give for free, Whispers at the bus stop. Well, I've heard about nights out in the schoolyard. I found out about you. I found out about you.”

Now listen, we love the '90s. Here we are all about the '90s we're talking about the fads, the trends, the shows, the music, the movies, the aesthetic, the vibe, it's a lifestyle. You know it, I know it. Besides, we live it every day. I love the ’90s so much sometimes I think it's my daily life. But guess what? It's not. That was decades ago. And we woke up “in medias res” if you're anything like me. a little bit happened right? We have a now what scenario my now what is I'm divorced single parent. Now what? But insert your own now what here? And I want to take you back. I want to take you back to Elaina, aka Debbie Newbery, your disc jockey through the halls of my high school. Ironically enough, maybe it's double irony. I go to church where my high school meets. Okay, so at any time, I could turn around and see the doppelganger of myself from the '90s. Yes, wearing my Pearl Jam t-shirt, come around the hallway, as if ready to go to lunch. I'm telling you, it is a bizarre experience. I don't know whether I'm coming or going. I don't know what sliding doors timeline I'm in. So I'm going to church walking down the corridor. And by the way, this is the same high school that my daughters will go to someday. And I'm seeing myself around every corner. So every Sunday, it's this jarring experience. And let me tell you there was even an event for kids and I'm walking down the hallway.

There's this mural of like Einstein that I don't remember from the '90s and this instrument and my daughter points to and says, “Mom, what is that silver thing?” It's actually a protractor. Like, that's what that thing is. And I remember that that mural was there when I was walking to math class. It's really bizarre. So let me paint this scene. We're talking about a knife in the foxhole. We're talking about betrayal. A lot of the songs in the '90s Like I said, had that jangling upbeat feel, but it belied the dark underbelly of some serious relationship betrayals, and we're gonna get into it. 

Let me just tell you, not a relationship, but a betrayal nonetheless, that I experienced. Looking back, I still wonder about it. Sometimes. It's probably one of the elements of my fight, flight or freeze. I tend to freeze like a deer in the headlights like deer in a frozen headlights. This might be one of the reasons why. Here I am a freshman. At that time our high school went from ninth grade to 12th grade and I made the tennis team. I was psyched. I think I even made varsity as a freshman. And we had a pep rally. Remember those pep rallies with the

basketball players, football players, the cheerleaders, a lot of smells like team spirit, right? All in one gymnasium. You got the haters, the stoners, the artsy kids, the jocks, the people who just wanted to leave, and the tennis team. It was the fall and we were making our debut as freshmen as part of the tennis team. And we looked up to the captains of the tennis team. They were intimidating as heck, let me tell you, they were beautiful. They were smart. You didn't want to look at them the wrong way. They were such talented tennis players. And let me tell you, I was in awe of them. They were incredible. They taught us this song about our high school, and we were going to be performing it as the new initiated freshmen of the team. We were wearing our tennis skirts. We had our high school jerseys on, we had our numbers for our tennis team, we had our windbreakers on. Yeah, remember, '90s windbreakers were all the rage. We had our white tennis sneakers. And we had our rackets. And maybe the eight of us, some of my closest friends. Were there. And we were told, now is the time for us to sing a song. Not gonna say the name of my high school protect the name of the innocent, but red and white forever. Blank, blank, high school rah rah rah to you were loyal, and for you will fight for or might fight for red and white forever. You get the idea. I still remember the song. And I'm looking around as I'm singing, representing a pep rally. And all of a sudden, I'm realizing there are people laughing. They are absolutely laughing. And I'm thinking, Wait a minute, we are the bastion of school spirit. Why are people laughing at us right now? And then I turned to the captains and I see they are laughing at us too. It begins to dawn on us as we keep singing as I keep singing my heart out. They made up the song. There is no school pride song of this nature. They did this as a hazing ritual for the freshmen. But no, no, not in secret in front of the entire school. But something happened. You know, there's a substack that I that I am thinking of subscribing to I haven't yet called “The other side of fear.” And the funny thing is, as I was sitting on that, you know, squeaky floor sticky, the gymnasium looking at all the faces laughing. I had this thought, what else? What else could possibly go wrong at this moment? What else can you throw at me, I am now on the other side of the terror that is being made fun of mercilessly, the knife in the foxhole by your own teammates at a pep rally. There's nothing else that can go wrong. What else can you do to me, really? 

And I realized years later when I think about that moment. First of all, I'm amazed. And I'm actually really impressed. How did those girls pull that off without us knowing? And hey, props to them, because that was an elaborate hazing ritual. And when I got over the embarrassment of that, I just realized that you know what, what was so awful and what was humiliating was just a moment. And as soon as that moment was over, probably the people in the audience didn't even care. You know, they were just watching the cheerleaders who were unsuccessfully doing a pyramid in one fell down. They probably were looking at and reading the football players and the muscles that they had, or they were wondering who they had a crush on or when this was going to be over. Or they were thinking that they were really hungry and they wanted to get out of there, who they were going to call after school. What ’90s song they were going to turn on the radio, they weren't thinking about me at all.

But to me, it was so serious at that moment, it was the knife in the foxhole. It was the Gin Blossoms. It was everything in that moment. And I realize when you're on the other side of fear when you're on the other side of something that you don't think you're gonna get through. There's a certain dignity to it. 

And let me break it down. I've been on the other side of divorced single parent now what for a good seven plus years, you know, and I was young. I had young kids when I was divorced. You know, I think every age when you get divorced has its challenges. I mean, some might say, hey, Elaina, you've got it easy. You're on easy street. You don't have to ask anyone when you want to go out. You can do whatever you want with your money. I get all that and you're not wrong. But what I want to say is that I had young kids divorced, I had a two and a four year old I'm talking try to go to church with a two and a four year old I've been getting the side-eye single parent for a really long time because when your two year old starts to run away, and you have to tell your four year old to get on the other side of the corridor so your two year old doesn't run away because you don't have another person there to stop her from running. You do tend to get the side-eye, and I've been getting it for a really long time. And you know what I'm on the other side of it. When I had to sit in a pizza parlor in Norton. Mass, while both my girls were crawling all over a foosball table, with my head in my hands, realizing I am now doing life entirely by myself responsible for these two little humans. And all of the work and the effort and the love and the patience and the sacrifice and the vows that I said, way back when amounted to nothing. When I sat there and realized that a certain existential weight came on me, and you know what? It was, like “Found Out About You,” the Gin Blossoms came back, it's the knife in the foxhole. And sometimes you can't outrun it. Sometimes you can't out drink it, you can’t out-carb it, okay? You can't even out work out it. You can't work hard enough. Put enough hours at work, you can't zone out, you can't drug out it. Some people will insert out here, right? Whatever it is you're trying to do to outrun the existential sadness. It can't happen. Sometimes the knife in the foxhole is a knife in the foxhole. And sometimes those '90s lyrics are some of the only things that can come back and offer some kind of comfort when I hear “Found Out About You,” I think somebody understands. And I think that's the power of writing. That's the power of lyrics, of music, of songwriting, of art, of performance, of literature, of film. We identify ourselves in the stories that we read, that we hear. And when you're in the '90s and you were in the car and you were in the passenger seat, you're riding shotgun in your best friend's car.

When you're grappling with the fact that you were just publicly beat down and humiliated during a pep rally. Sometimes you want to hear a little Gin Blossoms.

And now I do want to bring your attention to “My So-Called '90s Trivia.” Troubadours were huge in the '90s, they still are; I mean, gentlemen, learn how to play guitar, you're gonna have your choice of the ladies ladies. Don't we love a troubadour? Let me tell you who loved a troubadour. Okay, I am going to ask you a piece of trivia. Okay. It's go time, get your thinking caps on. Who was the Troubadour of the '90s. who dated not one, but two members of the show “Friends,” female members. Okay. Who was it? Do you know? Because I'm about to tell you. Okay. Courtney Cox, and Jennifer Aniston. Do you know who that troubadour was? Okay, Time's running out. Okay….Adam Duritz from Counting Crows! Did you know he also dated Winona Ryder. I'm sorry Winona forever if you don't know how amazing she is. We're gonna have to do a whole exegesis on it. She is incredible. Can you believe Adam Duritz? How did he pull that off? He has got a lot of W Rizz. Let me just tell you that he's never been married. Sir, I would love to know who came close to winning your heart over? Once you dated both friends, could you ever go back to normal life? That's what I want to know. Anyway, Back to the knife in the foxhole.

There was a moment I would say within the last month where of course my theme of Lord of the Rings has to be pervasive through all this. I've been really good. Okay, I deserve a ton of leg lamps out here. I don't often lose my temper. Divorced single parent now what? You have to do things for the good of your kids. If you're divorced, single parent now what? you have to put your emotions aside. I'm not saying you have to go all locked down on it. Can we say Fauci lockdown? We don't have to go full on. But you do have to put the needs of your children before your own. And I've been really good at that, I must say, but there was a time about, like I said about a month and a half ago, where there was a discussion with my ex, and something hit me because I was getting pushback. I won't go into why but I was getting pushback. And the existential, I would say at this point, anger was really getting to me. So I just turned to my ex and I said in fact I yelled” Get out of my house!” I did. I yelled that. I haven’t really done that, I probably have lost my temper about three to four times over a seven year period, I think I've been doing really well. Now the bad part about this and judge me if you will, my girls were home. I don't often do that. And thank God, I don't because I don't believe in that. But at that moment, all of the knife in the foxhole moments just came back to me and I was thinking, How dare you tell me? No. And all I could think of was Gollum at that moment. You guys know, I think in The Two Towers, that moment, where Gollum tells the evil part of himself to leave. And he says something like, “Leave now. And never come back.” Leave now and never come back. And I just felt like that, you know? And I feel like it's so real. And I feel like the '90s lyrics are the ones sometimes that get it because they were not afraid to go deep, whether it's Gin Blossoms, whether it's Soundgarden, okay, whether we're doing a deep dive with Counting Crows, whether we're we're whether Filter, right, “Photograph:” “Would you want to take my picture?/ Because I won't remember. Hey, Dad, what do you think about your son now?”

in the '90s, we weren't afraid of going there. And what I want to say is, if you've ever experienced a knife in the foxhole, it may not be with a spouse, you might be happily married, it might have been with a sibling, or a friend, or a coworker, right? Because that happens. Maybe you were betrayed by someone that you never thought would betray you. And there are different kinds of betrayal, right? We've all experienced that before. It might not be that you can just snap back. Right? It might not be that you might need to take a little bit more time. I had someone recently out here say, Well, you know, I was telling them about something hard. And they said, you know, you could just appreciate the good parts of it. And that is true. We certainly can. And we do that. We know that the '90s weren't all great, but we can appreciate the good parts of them. We don't put on rose colored glasses. But what I want you to know out here is if you've been trying to out do all of those things right? Mine would be out Insomniac it, I don't sleep very well. I'm not going to get into it, but it is not pretty. I just need to give myself permission to sleep because it doesn't make me special or cool. It just makes me a spaz. Okay, it's like I went to a '90s coffee shop and I just kept drinking the coffee. Now, I used to be able to drink as much coffee as I wanted and then just go right to sleep. Like in the '90s in college, I could pound my Dunkin Donuts and then go right to sleep. I mean, granted, I had heart palpitations, but I used to have that ability. No longer okay, it is no longer than '90s it is today. And apparently my ability to just chug caffeine and then go right to sleep is non-existent. I mean, how rude is that?

I mean, the sheer audacity of me not being able to go right to sleep without any time going by. After I've had caffeine, it's pretty annoying to me. I'm like, come on. I guess I've gotten older, I've gotten past that.

But you might need some time to work through whatever that knife in the foxhole was for you. You might need to put on some '90s music, you might need to do some of that '90s homework to get out that '90s pad and paper, right vintage old school notebook and say what am I afraid to say? What am I afraid to acknowledge? What is it that I'm dealing with still, that has to do with a knife in the foxhole? You might need to write it down and identify it, because we're going to keep on carrying it around. And what want to bring it all on home with is whether or not that person meant it as a hazing ritual, right? To this day, I think about that moment in the pep rally. But I also know that those girls were kind to me in other ways, right? I still run into some of them. Some of them are in my orbit in my city. They're connected to me through my daughter's school. They are around and we are part of a shared history. One of them even told me about the college that she went to. So nobody is all out to get us. Nobody is all, I would say benign. We all have those parts of us.

We all have those parts that are capable of those different things. And if we move through those moments, knowing that hey, we thought that was the worst that could happen.

And now we're on the other side. Now we can help other people through it. You survived the pep rally, you survived knowing that you were going to be a single parent. Look at how well you're doing, you're holding it together another day. I think you deserve a leg lamp by the way. We know that we can make it through anything. Now I know that for me, it's not alone. I know that it's the strength of God. That gets me through every single day. And it gave me the strength to move through the knowledge of the knife in the foxhole. And I pray and I hope that gives you strength as well. What I want to close with is some surprising inevitability, right? What does the '90s have to do with a knife in the foxhole? The lyrics speak for themselves. You know, I remember running and preparing for varsity tennis, right? Or Junior Varsity, all the different tennis games that I had, running in my neighborhood, which was one of my favorite things to do. I had a beautiful neighborhood, I was very blessed. And running was just another excuse to listen to music. And I used to love it, right? That was when I had a Walkman. And so you could just listen to different radio stations versus when I found Delilah because Delilah, the disc jockey, right, who spoke directly into our hearts. With her beautiful musings on life and love and loss and joy. I could find her on the radio station by just turning my little thumb and forefinger and I could get to another radio station. I think that's pretty much lost for kids today and people today, but I would go from one radio station to the other. And inevitably, I would find a perfect song for the moment. And with WB RU. I remember this song by Del Amitri. And it's called “Always The Last to Know.” And sometimes a knife in the foxhole has this surprising inevitability to it, it's surprising that it couldn't ever be any other way. And sometimes writing through whatever pain you're going through, helps to bring order out of the chaos of our brain and shows us that even if it couldn't have been any other way, it's still okay to feel how you feel about it. I just want to break it down for you that the lyrics go like this. It starts out again with the jangling guitar. So you think this is going to be light. This is going to be frothy, coffeehouse fair? Well, let me tell you, it's a little bit different than that. 

”So you're in love with someone else, someone who burns within your soul. And it looks like I am the last to know, I hear you've never felt so alive. So much desire beyond control. And as usual, I'm the last to know, the last to know how you're feeling. The last to know where you are the last to know if you're happy now. Or if he's treating you like I treated you. Or if he's cruel. I'll be the last to know.” And the lyrics go on. And you're thinking this is just a lovelorn guy, right? And every guy, a guy who could be me, a guy who could be you realizing that the person he loves has moved on with someone else. But wait. But wait, dear listener,

wait for the last part. “Always the last to know how you're feeling, the last to know where you are, the last to know if you're happy now. Or if he's cheated on you. Like I cheated on you. And you were the last to know. And you were the last No. Don't let me be the last to know.”

Sometimes life is like that. as the French say, "C'est ça qui est ça!" because we can't control another person. Maybe it's happened to you. Maybe it's happened to someone you know. Maybe the Del Amitri lyrics that you are so excited about running to took a turn. The '90s took a turn. You woke up in medias re, today, and you're wondering what the hell happened?

You're wondering if anybody cares if anyone really sees you. Let me tell you right now that God sees you. And I am no Delilah, but I see you and I see the situation that you didn't see coming. I see the knife in the foxhole. And I see that you're crumpled there and you wonder how you're ever going to get up. Even though you didn't see the Demitri lyrics coming.

You are going to get up.

You know why? Because just like in the pep rally, you stood there while they laughed at you.

You stood there, with 

Your tennis racquet and you said

I survived this

I survived it and I'm going to survive again.

Because it's not about the people laughing, It's about the fact that you're still standing there. And you're gonna keep standing. And I'm proud of you.

And dear listener,

as always, thanks for going down the waterslide with me. Until next time, don't forget to shine bright