Linda Perhacs: An Anecdote in Sequence

1) My father bought me the one album in existence by folk singer Linda Perhacs, Parallelograms, in 2004. 2) As a kid I was a whizz speller, but ‘parallel’ was one of those blind spot words, along with ‘bureau’ and ‘diarrhoea,’ so my father thought it would be witty to get me this album. 3) I call my father ‘dad’ in real life, but prefer the more formal ‘father’ for public usage. 4) My father, unknowingly, had bought one of the most delicious folk albums in history—beautiful, ethereal songs with psychedelic space-outs and sunny Californian melancholy. 5) Something can be sunny and melancholic at the same time. Don’t ask me how. 6) So, since I loved Parallelograms, I evolved a new CD gift system with my father. We’d only buy each other albums related to words we couldn’t spell on the first try. 7) Album titles only, not artists. 8) My father, like so many, can’t do ‘weird’ on the first try, he always mixes up his I’s and E’s. So, I bought him an EP by Hanson (of ‘MMMBop’ fame). 9) Much hilarity, and simmering resentment, since he’d got me a humdinger. 10) And I’d got him Hansen. 11) But balance was restored the following year when he bought me ‘Millennium’ by Robbie Williams. Ever since, we’ve never traded in semi-decent albums. 12) Something tells me this system is flawed.