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I agree with the notion that this song is interlinked with childhood sexual abuse and growing older with that burden, being sexually active before it's healthy to be, etc etc... it does wonders for a girl's confidence! blank face Yeah, right. Anyway...

My take on the orangeman: you know when the sun is behind a person and their silhouette takes on a colour from the refraction of light? I just see it being a man with no particular despcription apart from, the fact his silhouette has been rendered orange on account of the sun. It is a "late April day and it's sunny outside".

I think is song is about ( i know its horrable, but i wont say it doesnt bother me its pretty depressing) the girl is young and falls into the porn industry. The orange man is using his pennys to make her to whatever he wants and shes so into the pennys shes not realising whats going. Shes spreading her legs, skirt is all yanked up. "Her past is getting brighter" showing whever shes going (witch is DOWN...hmm) is im guessing is getting darker. And by the end her veins are showing (herion much?) and the only thing shes noticed is the orange man laughing. So being a porn star leads to drugs, death and orange men laughing at you! depressing song with a powerful message

To me, this song is full of imagery. It seems to take place in a moment, not to tell a chronological story.

A woman is close to climax as an adult, and has a flashback to the abuse she suffered as a child, starting with the moment she was taken away by her abuser. He probably dropped some pennies somewhere along the storyline, which is a detail central to her flashback.

Many abused girls later struggle with the effects of puberty, and while their bodies are growing up, emotionally they are still trapped as the hurt little kid.

"who left the playground a good decade before the bell rang?" Suggests to me that these events transpired when the girl was perhaps 7... she was forced to "grow up" at least a decade before her peers.

At the end of the song she seems trapped in the memory of her abuser.

Amanda's songs generally have multiple meanings, so it's thoroughly possible that any of the other meanings here are also correct. This is just what the song speaks to me.

an account of a little girl (possibly Amanda as a child?) sliding down a slide into the arms of a man in a orange coat whos going to abduct her and possibly rape her (because we know how many of Amanda's songs relate to sexual abuse of one sort or another).

i thought the song was sorta like Lolita, because "her little girl cheeks start to wrinkle but her smile is wide and her legs are spread wider her hair growing long and her hips getting larger" sorta implies that when she was abducted when she was younger, and is now getting older and older... (sorry about the incoherence....)

I think this song means one of two things:

One: The orangeman is actually age, waiting at the bottom of the slide one last time to take her away from the playground and make her grow up, hence " and her little girl cheeks start to wrinkle but her smile is wide and her legs are spread wider her hair growing long and her hips getting larger", meaning she's growing up, perhaps too soon because " who left the playground a good decade before the bell rang?".

Two: The song is about rape/sexual abuse, and the orangeman is a rapist who is tempting her with pennies at the bottom of a slide. The line "who left the playground a good decade before the bell rang" could mean that her innocence has been taken away by being raped.

This is one of the most haunting songs I've ever heard though, Amanda Palmer is a freaking genius

I think this song means one of two things:

One: The orangeman is actually age, waiting at the bottom of the slide one last time to take her away from the playground and make her grow up, hence " and her little girl cheeks start to wrinkle but her smile is wide and her legs are spread wider her hair growing long and her hips getting larger", meaning she's growing up, perhaps too soon because " who left the playground a good decade before the bell rang?".

Two: The song is about rape/sexual abuse, and the orangeman is a rapist who is tempting her with pennies at the bottom of a slide. The line "who left the playground a good decade before the bell rang" could mean that her innocence has been taken away by being raped.

This is one of the most haunting songs I've ever heard though, Amanda Palmer is a freaking genius

i really like this song. (yes, its a sad terrible song, but i like it)

"past getting brighter"

maybe its that the girl who is molested in this story has been before, and the orange man is illuminating her past making her remember.

"her veins are all showing" If you havent hit at least your mid twenties you probably havent notices how those veins tend to rise up. Im pretty sure its about how the "little girl" is aging, not about drug use. "Late April day" when she's at the top of the slide. Spring is a metaphor for youth or being youthful or young" the "orange old man at the bottom" could easily be autumn.

"Past getting Brighter"
When you're in your teens there isnt much of a past. There's your childhood, but when you're a teen you are more of an adult and doing more adult things. When adults look back on their history much of their late teens are included in their adult memories. Maybe the reference is that the past seems much brighter than it might of when you were in it.

/end blather.

So, to me, this song is about her going down a metaphorical "slide" as she ages. The orange man at the bottom is old age, and as she grows up, he takes a hold of her.

...the orange man got you.