Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Ohhh... NOW I get it!

Have any of you ever had weird misunderstandings from your childhood that you don't figure out until years later? Or maybe a joke you hear as a kid, and you laugh to be polite even though you don't understand it, and then one day, about a decade later, your mind is wandering and all of a sudden you're like "Oh, wait! NOW I get it!"

I think there are a few band names and song names that are puns, or have double meanings, or stuff like that, where I wasn't aware of the secondary meaning until long after I had first heard of them. For instance, I'm pretty sure the first time I heard of Adam Ant, I was about 8 years old. It probably wasn't until many years later that for whatever reason, I happened upon his name again, and I was like "Ohhh! Like the adjective 'adamant'!"

Similar things happened with the name of the band who did the song Funkytown. Their name is Lipps Inc. I think it wasn't until sometime in the current millennium that I said their name out loud and realized "Oh! Like 'lip sync'!"

In addition, I'm sure it took a long time before it dawned on me that the title of the reggae-influenced Led Zeppelin song D'Yer Maker, if said with the appropriate accent, sounds like "Jamaica", and that that was the whole point.

And I can also remember, as a small child, being vaguely confused and frustrated by the nursery rhyme about Solomon Grundy. The puzzle worked on me at that young age; I was honestly under the impression that Solomon Grundy must have been some strange otherworldly character who inexplicably led life at a magically sped-up pace. I guess it just so happened that it wasn't explained to me when I was very young, and then of course, nursery rhymes being what they are, I probably never encountered the story of Solomon Grundy again for years and years afterwards. I think I was about 14 or so when one day, for whatever random reason, I happened to encounter that nursery rhyme again, at which point it clicked. "Oh! I get it! Not necessarily the very next Wednesday!"

I'm sure everyone has examples in their own life. This is somewhat reminiscent of the very entertaining website I Used To Believe, which is about childhood misconceptions, but I'm talking about something slightly more specific: not just a weird idea you have as a kid, but something that escapes or eludes you as a child because it's just a little bit too subtle, and then literally years later, you happen to be thinking about the topic again, and then it clicks. Do you know what I mean?

1 comment:

Young Curmudgeon said...

This reminds me of the song or album Just Ice by Joni Mitchell. Simply remving the space creates a whole new meaning.