A Girl, Her Stepdad, And A Purple Bandanna

“HEY, I HAVE a Prince story,” said Krystal, the woman sitting next to me at a dinner party. And as she began, I kept hearing Prince in my head, singing about this thing called life.

Krystal was ten when her parents divorced. By the time she was 12, her mother had remarried. At 14, Krystal found herself living in Cloverport, Kentucky. “It had fewer than a hundred people, one schoolhouse, and two traffic lights. My mom ran the diner, and in the summer, I picked peppers in the fields to earn extra money.”

Danny, her new stepdad, drove a truck. When he was home, he tried hard to be friends. Teenage Krystal was ice. “The divorce was really hard on me. I was such a brat.”

Whether he was shoving his stepdad on-screen or singing about a mother who’s never satisfied, Prince got what it’s like to live with adults who don’t get you. For Krystal and me, Purple Rain was the movie and the soundtrack of our adolescence. “Dearly beloved,” Prince sang, “we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life.”