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Jul
12
She's Got a Chicken To Ride
2008 at 1pm Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
thekoolaidmom had a great post yesterday about weird names we have for everyday items, and it triggered thoughts of my childhood, which was filled with misunderstood song lyrics…
My parents love music and always had the radio on in the house when I was growing up. My fondest memories are from summer family roadtrips, when we’d listen to Aerosmith and Meatloaf with the volume up as loud as it could go and enjoy my mother’s delightfully creative butchering of the lyrics, which I seem to have inherited.
I spent most of my childhood thinking “secret agent man” was “secret Asian man,” and I envisioned a wily ninja fighting crime with a cool oldies theme song. Not sure when I learned the real lyrics, but if I’m alone, or it’s just me and my hubby, I’ll still sing “secret Asian man.” I just think it’s funnier.
When Simon & Garfunkel told Mrs. Robinson to “hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes/ put it in your pantry with your cupcakes,” I could have sworn she was supposed to put it (whatever it is) “in your pants or in your cupcakes,” and I was baffled. What was this thing she needed to hide (I’m still not sure), and how on earth could it be appropriately hidden in either pants or cupcakes, much less both? I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I only learned the correct lyrics about a year ago, when I was the car with my dad and he heard me singing my version.
When OMC released their one hit wonder “How Bizarre” in the late 90s (remember that one?), my little sister and her best friend sang along to “Help is on, help is on.”
And now my personal favorite…when were in college, Bob and I had to do the long-distance relationship thing over the summer, while was in St. Louis with his family and I was in Kansas City with mine. We took a lot of roadtrips back and forth and to nearby places. While we were rocking out to my newest road trip mix CD, Pearl Jam came on, and Bob belted out “Gently spoken…yesterday” in his better Eddie Vedder voice (which actually isn’t too bad) for “Jeremy spoke in class today.” I almost spit my soda onto the dashboard, and hilarity ensued as we discussed what he possibly thought the song was about since he clearly didn’t know it was about Jeremy.
The title of this post comes from a great series of commercials from a few years ago in which “She’s got a ticket to ride” became “She’s got a chicken to ride, and it’s in my hair;” and “Pour some sugar on me” became “pour some shook-up ramen.” Eeew.
I wish I could remember more of these, and I’m sure they’ll start coming back to me now that I’m thinking about it….and now, one last memory from the last family roadtrip: I was driving through central Missouri with my parents after moving out of my college apartment. If you’ve ever driven through central Missouri, you know there’s not much to see except corn fields and ridiculously huge XXX adult “novelty” stores. My dad and I were in the front seat and my mom was lying down in the back. As we discussed the seemingly unnecessary abundance of adult stores (especially in a place as conservative as mid-Missouri), my dad said, “we must be the only people around who don’t watch porn.” At this, my mom popped up from the back seat and declared, “we do too eat corn!” In the three years since that happened, anytime my mom has misunderstood a lyric or a comment in conversation, one of us has turned to her to remind her that “we eat corn!” My family forgets nothing.
*edit* my husband and I have two year old basset hound that we are head over heels in love with. Her name is Millie. Right after we got her, I heard the song “New Age Girl” by Deadeye Dick playing on a 90s flashback weekend on my favorite radio station….you’ll remember this song for the chours “Mary moo, she’s a vegetarian….she loves me so, she hates to be alone, she don’t eat meat, but she sure likes the bone…WOOF!” If you don’t know it, go download it now. You’ll thank me later.
Anyway, we rewrote the words: “Millie Moo, she’s a little basset hound (Millie Moo, Millie Moo)…she loves to walk and bark and hrmph* around, she sniffs a lot ‘cuz she’s low to the ground.”
*hrmph is a made-up word (do all couples do this?) for gallumphing/being lazy/acting irritable. as in “don’t get all hrmphy, it’s just a trip to Home Depot.” You can also just make the “hrmph” sound to express displeasure with something.
What lyrics have you misunderstood? Crazy family stories to share?
No related posts.
Unfortunately my wife and I can relate…I came here to read your Sunday Salon post above but scrolled down and saw this and couldn’t help but comment here since I just wrote about this subject on one of my other blogs: here…that misunderstand comment about the corn, though, is too funny and sounds like conversations between my mother and father sometimes.
We have a similar “We eat corn” comment in our family: We say “You broke your pole”. And if someone is stubborn to a point of self-destruction, we make scissor-motions with our fingers. Both of these are punchlines of jokes. “Hammer, Hammer… Sack, Sack” (reference to the inevitable) is another punchline that’s become part of the family language.
Growing up, Weird Al Yankovic was one of my favorite entertainers, and he’s saturated a lot of my humor (NO! I can’t believe that!). We often make up words to songs and sing them instead. Actually, we just make up songs at a drop of a hat for whatever we’re doing… my 15-year-old daughter made up one about riding her bike while we were waiting outside the grocery for a friend.
As for misunderstood lyrics, recently I was googling a new-ish song that I really liked. The only thing I could find on it was an aussie commercial for a fast food joint. I was shocked that I couldn’t find anything more on “Burger-licious”.
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