Today I'd like to talk to you about the human mind and how willing it is to wander off when we really need it the most. One of the ways it happens to me is the repetitive song torture. The other day at King Soopers, our groceries were bagged by a man who was singing the same lyrics nonstop. "These are the things I can do without. Come on, I'm talking to you, come on." As I was leaving the checkout I smiled and said, "I want you to know I'll be blaming you when I hear this in my head at 2:00 in the morning!" He got a good laugh out of it and went back to his singing. I was happy because he was happy. And I was glad that he was filled with the joy of life.
I'm certain that some of you have had more stressful variations of this curse. You are in a big staff meeting and the Big Boss is babbling about whatever bee is currently in his bonnet. (Don't you sometimes just love alliteration?) You know this stuff is important. But all your brain can hear is, "Party rock is in the house tonight, everybody just have a good time. And we gonna make you lose your mind, everybody just have a good time." You may even see giant hamsters teaching killer robots how to dance. But the important sales meeting? You might as well be asleep for all you're getting out of it at the moment.
And sometimes the song is so random! I was sitting at the computer last night and kept hearing, " Let me be by myself in the evening breeze, listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees, send me off forever, but I ask you please, don't fence me in..." I don't know why I was hearing Don't Fence Me In. Not that I dislike it, mind you. It really is a lovely song about freedom and the beauty of a place that sounds a lot like Colorado to me. And it was co-written by Cole Porter! Yes, the same Cole Porter who wrote I Love Paris, Night and Day, Just One of Those Things, and I've Got You Under My Skin. Maybe it wasn't such a bad song to have traipsing through my brain, after all.
I wish I knew why my brain does things like this. I try really hard to pay attention to what's going on, and my brain is somewhere in La La Land. Someone on t.v. starts to say something about some foreign dignitary visiting the US and I'm hearing "we wish to welcome you to Munchkinland." Of course, I often watch a movie and read a book or play a game at the same time, so maybe it's my own fault. No, my mind doesn't wander all the time, and no, I don't take news stories lightly. But sometimes I wonder about myself. Maybe sometimes you wonder about yourself too. But until I figure it out, "every day I'm shufflin'."
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