There Goes My Hero...Sergeant Larry

For someone whose entire education and subsequent career have focused on language and communication, I have a frightening lack of comprehension when it comes to hearing and repeating song lyrics. Frightening, also, because of the sheer volume of song lyrics I KNOW - ranging from early broadway to whatever Kanye West is muttering through his latest jaw operation. If you could actually clear out the portion of my brain that contains obscure song titles, artists and lyrics from 1980-1990, I might actually be able to comprehend and store other useful knowledge -- like, math. Or logic.

But as it is, there is no room for such triviality in a mind cluttered with idiotic and usually completely inaccurate song lyrics. And while I can freely admit those songs whose lyrics escape me, I still sing them anyway -- loudly and proudly and wrongly and lots of other adverbs.

Hearing a Foo Fighters song in the car today reminded me of this affliction -- the song is "There Goes My Hero" -- and the line right after that in the chorus is "He's ordinary." Or so my husband says. But as we all know, enunciation is not cool when you are an alt-punk-quasi-mainstream-band-with-a-nonsensical name, so I firmly believe that what I am hearing are the correct words -- "There goes my he-rooooh, Sergeant Larry."

And then we have Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," which for the last 20-odd years has contained the lyrics (at least in my head) "livin' in a pony keg and giving up sparks." All I can think of is a little electrified, short-circuited troll swimming around inside a shrunken beer container.

Abba's "Take a Chance On Me" -- why the hell would they be singing "Honey I'm still free?" I was like 5 when I first heard this song, so from there on out it has been "Ollie Oxen Free" and the song was, clearly, written about hide and seek.

Britney Spears' "Toxic" (yes, I own more than one Britney Spears album) -- "it's the taste of a poison paragraph"

There are some songs I can't hear without laughing -- Alanis Morrisette's "You Oughta Know," in which I DO know what she's saying, but it's far more amusing to think about "the cross-eyed bear that you gave to me" than the "cross I bear." Picturing a deformed carnival prize here.

From "Live and Let Die," the line "this ever changing world in which we live IN" makes my English major sensibilities want to ball up into the fetal position.

I'm sure there are a zillion more but for now, I need to go see if there's already a fan club started for sergeant Larry.