Bathroom's on the right

I love music. Actually, I love lyrics first, music second. I’ve been known to be so deeply touched by song lyrics that I’ll play the same tune over and over, for hours on end, until I can get past the emotions – or – until the family starts screeching and banging on the floor because I’m driving them absolutely insane. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that my musical tastes are not limited to any particular genre. My little emotional marathons can run the gamut from pop to country, oldies to heavy metal. I’m an equal opportunity obsessive. I’m amused (and annoyed!) by people who “sing along” without knowing what the hell they’re actually singing. They know the tune but the words tend to sound like “I love… yeah… ooooooh…. uh uh…. la la la …. Baaaaby” - reminds me of a really bad game of “Hummmzinger.” I so love the folks who get the lyrics TOTALLY wrong yet truly believe they’ve got them EXACTLY right. There’s a comedian (whose name escapes me) who does a routine about travelling by car with his aging parents. They have a tendency to sing along with the radio, mutilating well-known songs. For example: “Big ole jet airliner” became “Bingo Jed had a light on” “Lucy’s in the sky with diamonds” became “Lucy’s in a fight with Linus” and my personal favorite from his routine: “Don’t let your sonnnnnnnn go down on meeeeeeee.” At least we never had to worry about Elton John and George Michael singing it THAT way in their duet. Surfing the Web, you can find entire websites devoted to “misheard” song lyrics. I highly recommend them when you need a good laugh. One I like a lot is http://www.amiright.com/ Personally, no matter how hard I try, I can’t listen to CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising” without subconsciously singing “Theeeeere’s a bathroom on the right.” I guess we all have our foibles. Anyway, all of this brings me to my younger daughter. Like me, my kids love music. It’s a staple in our house and she’s even trained her budgie to love it too. The darn bird actually bops along to the catchier tunes. Imagine my surprise when I heard my daughter singing what I thought was “We Got The Beat” by the GoGos until I got closer, saw her boogying down in the bedroom and belting out, “We got big feet… we got big feet…. Yeaaahhhhhh! … we got big feet!”. Once I stopped giggling, I asked her if she wanted the right words. Turns out, she knew them just fine. To my surprise, she has a little hobby rewriting song lyrics. Who knew? She’s always been a fan of Weird Al parodies so I guess she had inspiration. I asked her if she had written anymore and she said yes – but she didn’t want to tell me in case she got in trouble. I couldn’t see what could be so wrong and encouraged her to sing it for me. WELL! Doing her best Sir-Mix-A-Lot impression, my lovely, polite, lady-like 11 year old daughter belted out her rendition of the ever-so-popular “Baby Got Back” – known to most as the “I like big butts song.” Picture this: I like big boobs and I cannot lie You other brothers can't deny when a girl walks in with an itty bitty chest cuz she ain't got no breasts you go "awwwwwwwwwwww" Ya know… it wasn’t a shining moment in my quest to be a responsible mom… you’re supposed to wait until they can’t see you before you burst out laughing.