Thursday, November 10, 2011

Irrational thinking, no, it's just jelly bread

It came to my attention tonight that perhaps, just perhaps, I don't think like other people.  Let's say my thinking is outside the box.  Wait, let's be real, my thinking has it's own little box somewhere.  This all came from a discussion of the Lord's Prayer at my book club.  Where I just happened to mention that when I was a kid that I thought the one line was "give us this day our jelly bread".  Now I wasn't a big fan of jelly bread back then, but what the heck, if God was going to give me jelly bread, who was I to say no.

Now really I am sure some of you out there might of thought the same thing and then again maybe not.  Did you know there is a name for all this. Sure enough, it's called a mondegreen. 

A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near homophony, (A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. in a way that gives it a new meaning. Like to, two and too)  It most commonly is applied to a line in a poem or a lyric in a song.

Three best know mondegreens are:
  1. "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear (from the line in the hymn "Keep Thou My Way" by Fanny Crosby, "Kept by Thy tender care, gladly the cross I'll bear")
  2. There's a bathroom on the right (the line at the end of each verse of "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival  "There's a bad moon on the rise")
  3. 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy (from a lyric in the song "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix  "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky")
One that was not mentioned here was a favorite of my friend,  Joan.  Years back she called me hysterically laughing about something she had heard.   It was from the Beach Boys Song, "Help me Rhonda"  the line was -
Well since she put me down, I've been out doin' my head
But someone had heard:
Well since she put me down, I've got owls puking in my bed  

So you see, I don't think that jelly bread and daily bread are that far off.  And true, I might not think the same way as other people, but then again, wouldn't that be boring if I did. 

and that's just  .......... a brother stays in a cat with socks on.  Oops, I meant to say..... another day in Catasauqua.




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