Everyone's childhood is peppered with incidents of "misheard" words and phrases. And when we finally learned what it was people were saying, a giant high-beam cut through the fog, and language suddenly made sense again. Here are just a couple of my favorites.
Like most kids, I learned to sing the alphabet song before I saw the characters and made the connections. And I thought that "allamano" was one letter, a letter with a long name like "W." Aich, Eye, Jay, Kay, Allamano, Pea.
I thought "brock" was a verb. The soap opera, right before Casper the Friendly Ghost came on, always ended with, "The Eeeedge of Nnnnight has been brock to you by...Duz for Dishes!"
Gosh, who would have written, "Ugly, isn't she?" across the bottom of this photo? Could it have been... Satan? (I believe this was near the apex, the acme of my adorableness.) No, this was clearly the work of a sibling, and there was only one sibling who could read and write when I was this size....
Sunday, August 23, 2009
What'd She Say?
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I came home from first grade and proudly sang the patriotic song I'd learned that day for my mother. Although she was a war bride and a relatively new citizen, she knew there was something not quite right with the lyrics: "My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, O.V.I.C."! When she asked, I told her I didn't know what O.V.I.C. stood for, but I was quite certain of the words, as we had sung it over and over that day. Besides, what did she know, she wasn't even a "real" American!
We remained at loggerheads about it until my father returned home that evening and diplomatically straightened us out.
Oh, that's hilarious. I will forever think of "O.V.I.C." whenever I heard that song.
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