Tuesday, April 5, 2011

A to Z Blogging Challenge - Day 3 - Catchy

Isn't it strange how some things stay lurking in the corners of our minds, triggered by a sound, sight or event. I can't tell you how many times an old song comes on, one I haven't heard in years, and suddenly I am jammin', belting out the lyrics as if it were on the current top 10 charts. Often I am amazed I even remember the lyrics. If I tried to recite the words without the music, I'd most likely come up blank, but the music guides me and the words come freely.

Other times, a word or saying during conversation will spur me to think of an old jingle. Yes. Those tunes are catchy and easily learned. Why I don't just forget them, I'll never know. Then again, who could forget that little boy sitting there singing, "My bologna has a first name..." I bet you can finish the end of that one. And we all know that Almond Joy has nuts, mounds don't. Yep. Sometimes you feel like a nut...sometimes you don't. But really, I feel like a nut quite often. I like to laugh and make people laugh and smile. But when we can't laugh, when things are so terribly stressful, we all want to scream, "Calgon, take me away!"

And it's not only commercials that remained in our memories. Challenge your friends to a television theme song competition. Name an old show and see if they can sing the song. I bet most of my friends would know all the words to Gilligan's Island and the Brady Bunch. It is amazing how much information is stored inside our heads, for years and years I might add, and for no real purpose. Yet, more important matters seem to slip our mind.


Sometimes these old memories can interfere with our concentration. Have you ever been so hooked on a memory that you couldn't fully focus on the task at hand. Such was the case for me with yesterdays blog post. As day three of the A to Z Blogging Challenge, the post should be related to the letter C. My daughter, home sick, spent most of the day coughing. Coughing begins with C, but it isn't related to literature or language nor words or communication. That's what this blog features. Of course, thinking of related topics for C should be easy as cake, right? When it comes to writing, we can discuss ways to increase creativity. When writing books, character development and conflict are key issues. Different types of books, like chapbooks and chapter books, could be explored. Poetry? How about listing the rules for writing a cinquain or canzone? I could have...should have...would have written on any of these if my mind wasn't stuck in years gone by. If I had just written "what topic begins with C" at the top of a piece of paper and brainstormed based on that, I would have been fine. Instead, I made a terrible mistake. I thought to myself, "C-- C is for...what?" Well, that did it. For the rest of the day all I could hear running through my mind was Cookie Monster singing "C is for cookie". Maybe it is my degree is in elementary education. Remember those days in kindergarten when your assignment was to bring in an item beginning with a certain letter? Or maybe that silly song is just so catchy and memorable (love that part at the end where he starts devouring the cookies and crumbs fly everywhere) that I simply cannot erase the song from my mind. Whatever the reason may be for this song/scene being on continuous re-play in my mind, I am blaming Cooking Monster and my coughing child for the delay in posting. After all, it can't be my own fault, right? If that were the case, I'd need to confess. And we wouldn't want to do that. Publicly. No. No. Certainly not. In fact, I am just going to forget all this, call this post complete, and focus on the matter at hand...day 4 and the letter D.

Darn...I just remembered something...dammit Sesame Street! You haunt me. You've done it again. There is sweet, sweet Ernie with his striped shirt and stuffy 'ol Bert with those slanted eyebrows, and they are singing. "Dee, dee-dee, dee-dee, dee-dee, dee-dee, dee-dee, doggy". Of course, that's just the intro. The best lines are "Oh, do a dance. Dig some dirt. Dunk a doughnut for dessert. Draw a daisy that's dee-de-lightful to see.
When "D" is handy, it's fine and dandy."

Yes, that lovely letter called D is dandy and D stands for much more than dictionary. I am sure I'll come up with something.







S

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, this was such fun to read. I grinned all the way through. And you call yourself a regular gal. Hah!

Linda H. said...

Thank, Margo. Glad you enjoyed it.
But I am just a regular gal...a regular gal who likes to make people laugh and smile.

Laurie Kolp said...

Linda, I love this! I could just picture you walking around with cookie monster on your mind all day. And now that you've associated the A-Z challenge to Sesame Street, I'm sure you can easily entertain us all month.

~laurie = )