Songs Get Stuck In My Head

I am whistling (and I rarely whistle) "I Enjoy Being A Girl" from Rodgers & Hammerstein's "Flower Drum Song."

I hate that song. Or, rather, I hate the lyrics. I do enjoy the melody (hence my whistling).

The song has been stuck in my head all day. I believe it's because a friend's son is in a summer production of "South Pacific," and my head has been bouncing around all things Rodgers & Hammerstein.

My thoughts are a bit like the Microsoft Bing ads (disclaimer: this is not an endorsement nor commentary on Bing), where one person asks a question and another person sets off in a ramble of websearch-style "related" subjects. Say one thing, and in a space of about a minute I will be talking about a subject that I have related, leaving other people confused, and, at times, a little frightened.

It's especially true with songs. And once my mind settles on a song, it will play over and over in my mind, sometimes for days. I will find myself singing it, humming it, whistling, or analyzing lyrics. This is fine if it's a song I like, but when I find myself doing it with a song I dislike, it drives me batty.

And "I Enjoy Being A Girl" drives me batty: "I'm strictly a female female..." yech. Even though I understand the character, yech.

Years ago, when I was first starting out on my own, I lived in a women's residence in downtown Minneapolis. It had a large, comfortable lounge on the 2nd floor where there was usually a piano along with the stuffed chairs and a good view of the parades from the large plate-glass window. There was also a large, cement-floored basement/rec room, with a ping pong table, vending machines and a console television where the women could also gather.

But one weekend a year, the basement was off limits. The piano was moved by elevator to the basement, the furniture pushed aside, the stairway blocked off to residents, and the producers of the ampitheater musical in Medora, North Dakota, would hold auditions for the summer's production.

And the communal areas of the residence would be filled with the sounds of singing, piano, and dancing. Over and over we would hear "I Enjoy Being The Girl." I got so I knew the first verse intimately. I could have stepped in and auditioned with it, I knoew it so well. (I would never use that song, though; I'd pick something that hadn't been sung fifty times already.)

So now "I Enjoy Being A Girl" reminds me of when I was young and poor, regretting that I couldn't afford to quit my job for the summer and go sing and dance in Medora.

The show still runs. And, I suppose, young women still audition with Rodgers & Hammerstein. Or maybe the old standards sit gathering dust while the new wannabes sing songs from "Hairspray" and "Legally Blonde."