Wes told my mom the other day that the garage was a “wrecking mess”. I’m not even sure what he meant to say, but that was obviously not it. It did take me back to several of my childhood (or maybe also adulthood) misheard lyrics and phrases.
As a kid, I remember hearing a fun little ditty in my dad’s truck and I would mainly sing it out because of its catchy tune. It went like this, “Secret Asian man, secret Asian man!” After all, it makes complete sense people. Lots of Asian men are secret spies. Do you know Jackie Chan? Jet Li? Bruce Lee? C’mon, we all know them. Do we not see the massive connection here? This song is talking about a spy from Asia. Yes, of course it is. I felt rather disgruntled when I found that Johnny Rivers had originally written it, “Secret agent man, secret agent man”. Way to let a 10 year old down man! I’ll be honest, having to accept my version as erroneous, the song at best, has lost a bit of its initial value in my heart.
The next song I remember singing was, “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” by Toby Keith. The song says,
Should’ve been a Cowboy
I should’ve learned to rope and ride
Wearing my sex shoe, riding my pony on a cattle drive
Stealing the young girl’s hearts…
I never really knew what a sex shoe was, but I was pretty sure it was inappropriate. I just figured Mr. Keith was one of those improper and uncensored types of singers. I mean music was going downhill in the 90’s. After all, the radio saw nothing wrong with the singing of dirty, sensual shoes.
You might wonder why I didn’t ask my parents to clarify. Really? Are you serious? Because who wants to ask their parents about sex shoes? Or worse yet, who wants to find out if their parents actually have their own personal set of sex shoes? NOT. ME. NO, GRACIAS! Positively unsuitable. Both then and still now. Keep your sex shoes to YOURSELF mom and dad. Thank heavens I just kept singing it wrong for a decade so as to avoid an unnecessary and vastly uncomfortable situation.
I did learn later that the actual lyrics read, “Wearing my six-shooter riding by pony on a cattle drive”. Well, there you go. A six-shooter. A gun. Yep.
I also remember hearing my dad use the phrase, “every fiber of my being.” For years, I thought he was saying, “With every fiber of my bean.” The thing is, beans DO have fiber. In fact, they have a lot of fiber. Why hasn’t anyone else figured this out? It is very easy to infer this if you understand nutrition. With everyone trying to be healthy these days and eat organic foods and only buy free range everything, I knew that this phrase had to be accurate. I will not announce an age at which I learned the correct words of this phrase.
Then recently the movie, Frozen, came out. I downloaded a few songs for Wes to listen to in the car and one was “Fixer Upper”. Such a cute song! I love the beat of the drums in this one. While thumping the steering wheel to the beat I would sing, “Get Beyoncé out of the way and the whole thing will be fixed!” Because, yeah, Beyoncé is this really big deal right now so the song must be making a reference to her in their music. Right? Shows and songs do that now, you know. It wasn’t until later, that I realized it was saying, “Get the fiancé out of the way, and the whole thing will be fixed.” Ohhhhh, I get it. She is engaged to someone else and it’s talking about getting rid of him. Well. Whatever. Beyonce, fiancé, shmiance. It all sounds the same when you’re singing it.
And apparently this particular gene has been passed down to my kid. You learned about what in church? Ferris wheels? Got it.
Have a great day everyone!