I Say Fever

Very simply, I believe this song is about a man who is in love with an underage girl. The clues are all there, but by his own admission he has purposely obscured them (because, let's be honest: the topic is controversial, to say the least).

Okay, first off, the very first sentence is a bit of a red herring in context. The notion that this girl "took herself to wait five years" refers to the fact that she had already promised herself not to have sex until after she had graduated high school. It doesn't have much of anything to do with the song's narrator, as it was something she decided before she ever met him.

Then we move on strictly to his point-of-view. He has fallen for a very young girl--13, I'm guessing, since it would take a 13-year-old five years to reach the age of consent. When the narrator says, "This is just code to decipher," what he's really saying is, there are clues to the girl's age in the song if you're paying attention, the first and most prominent being the five years that serves as the song's leitmotif. But there are other clues too.

One of the biggest ones is the reference to the Piper. The most famous in all of literature is the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and if you know the story, then you know that the Piper wound up leading all of the town's children away from town after the townspeople refused to pay him for ridding it of rats. This is a pretty solid metaphor for the idea that it would be easy for the narrator to lead this girl (who probably has a major crush on him) down the wrong path. Kids are easy to manipulate and that's the point there. So, when he says he chased the Piper, he means he chased off the temptation to take this girl before her time.

As for the Plowman, in The Canterbury Tales the Plowman was a symbol of great virtue. Thus, when the narrator "found his Plowman" he means that he found his virtue and resisted temptation. Thus, "Found my Plowman, chased the Piper" are really just two ways of saying the same thing.

Another clue is, "hold my heart like a hot potato." Hot Potato is, of course, a game famously played by children. Thus, this girl has the narrator's heart in her hands, but she is too young to know what to do with it.

Finally, the biggest clue comes in the form of one of the people advising him: her teacher. Who has teachers? Adults usually do not. This is a young girl still of school age.

His final realization about all of this is that, five years after the fact, when the girl finally reaches maturity, she is no longer interested in him: "The first five years go by and we are no longer here." Thus, he decides, "I blame myself for not taking steps to draw her near. I try to decide what to do now based on love not fear." He's saying he should've seized the opportunity while he had it, struck while the iron was hot, so to speak. Instead of being afraid of the consequences, next time he will make his move based on his heart, not his head.

Now, please keep in mind that this song is just a song. It deals with a difficult theme, and it's point is somewhat obscured, but it says nothing about Brent Knopf, okay? Just so that's clear.