OF Earworms and Fond Memories

Well it has been eight days since I attended my nephew’s performance in the IEMA concert at Peoria.


It has been eight days that I have had an earworm.

No matter how hard I try I can’t shake it, UNLESS that is I revert back to the earworm that I had right prior to that.

I’ll define an earworm for you, as I only learned this recently and think there could be others who don’t recognize the terminology.

An earworm is that song that is stuck in your head that keeps playing over and over again. Anytime you’re not thinking of something specific, as in those moments when you could be blank, in comes the worm, wiggling through your brain and haunting you with its song.

Earworms can be quite annoying. Sometimes I will myself to think of other things in order to push the earworm out.

That in itself can be a bad thing, or a good thing depending on what comes in to replace it.

For me this week it has ended up being a walk down memory lane.

The concert we attended was really wonderful. The kids who were participating were truly talented musicians, and I enjoyed very much the blend of instruments, the blend of voices, the drama of the conductors, it was all just perfect in my opinion.

The music was lovely, but I shared with my sister and nephew somewhat to their disappointment that it wasn’t genuinely the kind of music that I like.

I wasn’t saying anything negative about the performances; I was just saying that the music was much more sophisticated than I was.

When I was in high school, we attended an entirely different type of event each year. It was a gathering of school choral departments, and we all got to go.

It lasted one day only, starting early on a Saturday morning, and ending with a Saturday night concert that our parents attended.

We had special music, and special conductors, who were generally very charismatic, and most of the teenage girls in the group imagined themselves in love with the conductor and saw a future as the wife of the maestro.

I remember distinctly one such gentleman who at the beginning of the morning, taught us all to sing; “I’m alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic, I’m alive, awake, alert enthusiastic, I’m awake alert alive, alive awake alert, I’m alive awake alert enthusiastic!”

Then we’d sing it again, faster, then again, faster, then again, faster until finally we were all singing so fast that the girls would succumb to giggling, the boys would roll their eyes and laugh, but in the end, we had started the day on a very good note literally.

This was but one really good memory from my high schools years. Attending Robert’s concert also brought to mind other years.

I recalled attending this special gathering in Paris Illinois one year. It was a grand day filled with hard work, but we did get a break before the concert.

I recall a small group of girls who decided to walk uptown and go “shopping”. Well, I went along, and as I traversed through the shops I found an excellent gift for my mom. Now I don’t remember the occasion I was buying for, but I remember the gift. It was a carnival glass bell, and it cost me 15 bucks!

I think back now, and I’m not so sure but what that may have been the first time ever I chose a gift for my mom without being accompanied by my dad or my grandma.

Back to memories of school, I remember the fall I had to start school with both of my feet in snow white bandages and wearing old grandma style sandals.

Bruce Balding made fun of me, saying that for the Chorus picture for yearbook we were all going to prop our feet up on the chair in front of us. I was mortified!!

I also remember Rose Sunderland our choir director and her strange and quirky ways.

I remembered the skirt she wore to one of our concerts that was made entirely of men’s ties.

I remember the only lines I ever had in a musical; Gideon’s Rainbow, and my lines were “Gideon!’ she calls” again a bit louder, “Gideon!” Finally, very loudly, she cries out to the wonderer, “Gideon!”

HA! Definitely not a defining moment in my acting career! But I took it seriously, and bragged a bit that my words would be the ones that launched the play!

Then there was the yawning experiment. It was Rose Kocher and Judy Dallmier who started it. They sat in the alto section, in the back row on the end. The two had a bird’s eye view of the entire group, and watched and laughed as first Rose, then Judy offered up a large yawn, and one by one, everyone in the room followed suit!

When we noticed their giggling, they were obliged to explain what they had done, all in good fun. I denied yawning, I was certain that I had not. But they swore we all did it unconsciously! What a hoot, that was my first role as a guinea pig in a “scientific” experiment.

Another memory was my first Madrigal Dinner. Yet another earworm, “With boars head in hand bear I bedecked with Bay and Rose-mar-i!”

My mom made me the most beautiful shiny blue umpire waste dress with shimmering sequins. I loved it. As a matter of fact, I still have it!

Some of my best memories of high school came from being in Chorus. Now of course not all of them were good, there were bad moments and things that embarrassed me, but alas those memories are no longer worth remembering.

So what has brought on this full eight days of walking down memory lane?

It was a poem written by Robert Frost entitled The Garden Girl, and set to music.

A Neighbor of mine in the village

Likes to tell how one spring

When she was a girl on the farm, she did

A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father

To give her a garden plot

To plant and tend and reap herself,

And he said, "Why not?"

In casting about for a corner

He thought of an idle bit

Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,

And he said, "Just it."

And he said, "That ought to make you

An ideal one-girl farm,

And give you a chance to put some strength

On your slim-jim arm."

It was not enough of a garden,

Her father said, to plough;

So she had to work it all by hand,

But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow

Along a stretch of road;

But she always ran away and left

Her not-nice load.

And hid from anyone passing.

And then she begged the seed.

She says she thinks she planted one

Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,

Radishes, lettuce, peas,

Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,

And even fruit trees.

And yes, she has long mistrusted

That a cider apple tree

In bearing there to-day is hers,

Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany

When all was said and done,

A little bit of everything,

A great deal of none.

Now when she sees in the village

How village things go,

Just when it seems to come in right,

She says, "I know!

It's as when I was a farmer--"

Oh, never by way of advice!

And she never sins by telling the tale

To the same person twice.

There were many words to this song, and while the tune was not difficult it was quite lively.


As we raced through the piece it was vital that everyone be succinct.


Enunciation was vitally important. With the fast pace had we not be precise in our work, it would very well have sounded like a bunch of teenagers high on sugar and caffeine speaking in tongues!


Of course the old saying if you start together and end together no one will notice what happened in the middle never applied when Rose Sunderland was directing It was right all the way through or it was a disaster!


Singing in the chorus required watching the director, listening to your neighbor, reading your music and hearing the accompaniment all at the same time, and believe me we all did it religiously for no one wanted to be the person who would blurt out the first word a half beat too soon, or hold the last note a tenth of a second to long!


We practiced that song, and practiced that song.


Then it was at the spring pops concert that we actually performed it.


I remember it. I remember it so very well. As we sang along, it perfect tone, not a note missed, not a word out of place, the farther we went, the happier I was.

The song filled me heart with laughter because it was such a silly song, such a silly girl.

And I remember that after the concert, it was my folks who said they had noticed how very happy I seemed when I sang that song.

And, what can I say even today singing still makes me happy.

Though I’m older, and a bit raspiers, with those beautiful high soprano notes no longer attainable, I still enjoy singing along with the radio, TV or a CD.

But frankly, in spite of the wonderful week of memories, I’m really getting kind of tired of this earworm.

I know that a small handful of my old classmates read this blog, and I’m giving you a gift tonight, MY EARWORM!

If you were in chorus in high school, and sang this song, surely you too have memories of what fun we used to have singing in the chorus.

So, here it is, it’s yours now, and I’ll go back to the one I had before last Saturday.

I get off on a 57 Chevy.

I get off on screamin guitar.

Like the way it gets me,

Every time it hits me.

I’ve got a rock and roll,

I’ve got a rock and roll heart.