song tag

I suffer from a condition that I call "song tag." I am highly susceptible to this condition and there is no quick remedy. Simply walking past someone on the street or visiting a convenience store for less than a minute can set it off. I can even get it from a commercial on TV.

The condition is this: all I need is to hear a few bars of a song and it will stick in my head for days. There is no telling which song will set it off or when it will stop. I can even try to counteract the condition by playing some other song that I would prefer to have stuck in my head, but when that song ends, up comes the song that won't go away.

Over the weekend we drove back to Bob's sister's house outside of Pittsburg to drop off one more load of stuff that won't fit into our new apartment. We stayed at Bubba's house, (that's Bob's mom) as we did at Christmas time, where Bubba keeps a little transistor radio playing in the bathroom at all times. The radio was tuned to the Christmas music station throughout our previous visit and I came home, not with a sweet rendition of a classic like "I'll Be Home for Christmas" or "The Christmas Song" repeating in my head, but with "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas." It stayed through New Years. I swear this was used as a form of torture during the Korean War.

This time the radio was stuck on the country music station and now I'm back to my desk at work with "Achy-Breaky Heart" battering the inside of my cranium. It's nightmarish.

Furthermore, a side effect of the condition is "bogus lyrics." Too often the song is one I don't know well enough to know more than a line or two of the words, and so, as the condition progresses, my mind starts making up lyrics to fill in the blanks. By this afternoon's commute, I will be humming something like "Don't cut a fart, a stinky-winky fart, you don't want to stain your underpants...."

And bogus lyrics come on more quickly when the song is in another language. I cannot hear "Guantanamera" without singing "One-ton tomato, I ate a one ton tomato...." because of this condition. Bogus lyrics happen with symphonic pieces as well. The pastorale ad libitum of Arcangelo Corelli's "Concerto Grosso in G Minor" now tells the story of our friend Sara making dessert. It goes something like: "She baking a tart tartan. She's baking a tart tartan. Not pudding or flan, or pears from a can. She's baking a tart tartan." And for me, the theme song to "Il Postino" begins with "So anyway, I ride around, upon my bicycle all O-ver town...." I have ruined entire CDs for Bob who now cannot listen to most instrumental pieces without hearing my made up lyrics.

There is no cure and it's getting worse. I can only imagine what I will be like in the nursing home.

Okay, back to work and Billy Ray. Now how does that song go again? "Don't shop Wal-Mart, with-a broken shopping cart, you'll never make it to the checkout stand...."