Growing up immersed in American popular culture, we are aided along our way toward young adulthood by the music we like. Our tastes may vary, but for many in my generation one important genre was sweet soul music, including the type known as Philly soul. For that, we can thank — among many other things — the songwriting skills and plaintive falsetto of William Hart, lead singer of the Delfonics.

If you ever were drawn to the aching love songs of that group, you may understand why the chorus of one of their long-ago hits has been playing like a refrain in my mind:

“Tell me this is a dream.

Somebody, please

tell me this is a dream.

Somebody, please

tell me this is a dream.”

     Well, we know that’s not going to happen. The election has come and gone, going Donald Trump’s way; absent some unforeseen occurrence* between now and the inauguration (fingers crossed he spontaneously combusts), he will be our next president. If you believe “…life is but a dream,” or are one who sees no difference between the outgoing and incoming administrations, you may be able to think of our upcoming political reality as just more of the same. Apart from his supporters, the rest of us are bracing for a possible series of nightmares.

Although the Delfonics sang songs about the joys and sorrows of romantic love, some of their titles alone might have served as warnings during Trump’s presidential campaign; other titles could be useful during whatever amount of time he remains in office. For instance, one thing you might have told a Trump enthusiast before the election was “He Don’t Really Love You.” You might have tried “Over and Over” to get him or her to “Think it Over.” For your efforts, that member of the make-America-great-again crowd most likely would have told you that all you were doing was just “Trying to Make a Fool of Me.”

No matter what I think of Donald Trump, there is no denying he has earned the right to ask “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time?” After writing in March of last year that we might deserve him, and in August that he was right when he said people would still vote for him even if he stood in the middle of New York City’s Fifth Avenue and shot someone, by November I was writing that I didn’t believe he would prevail. I guess I was “Lying to Myself.”

Since the election, there have been news stories reporting that some of his voters already have begun to ask him if he is going to “Break Your Promise.” They’re hoping he won’t give them a reason to ever mutter the words “I’m Sorry.” He will (and we should help ensure it), but when he does disappoint them, we should work at being magnanimous enough to resist saying “I Told You So.” In the meantime, unlike the dulcet tones of the Delfonics, the discordant notes you now hear in the near distance are those of our present-day president-elect bellowing “Ready or Not Here I Come.”

*After writing this post, I happened upon an International Business Times article titled “Will Trump Be President?” In it, Mary Pascaline writes about a blind Bulgarian woman named Baba Vanga who died eleven years before Barack Obama first ran for the White House. Considered to be a psychic and called the “Nostradamus from the Balkans,” Vanga reportedly predicted not only that our 44^th president would be black, but that he would be the last president. On this eighth day of Christmas, I’m not hoping for quite that much.