Nebulous Mooch

People sing this song every new year at midnight and I wonder how many of them know the real words.

For the longest time I thought the first line was “May all acquaintance be forgot.” I’d sing that part and mumble my way through the rest. Then I noticed that most of the people around me where doing the same thing. They’d mumble some vague syllables or just hum. How did this song that no one really knows get to be the song that we sing at midnight?

Now that you’ve completed the list of New Year’s Resolutions that you’ll probably only keep for three weeks, you probably have plenty of time to kill before heading out to that New Year’s Eve party tonight. So here are the real lyrics to the song. You can start the new year out right by impressing your friends with your wealth of knowledge.

Auld Lang Syne

Should old acquaintance be forgot,and never brought to mind ?Should old acquaintance be forgot,and auld lang syne ?
CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
And surely you’ll buy your pint cup !And surely I’ll buy mine !And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,for auld lang syne.
CHORUS
We two have run about the slopes,and picked the daisies fine ;But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,since auld lang syne.
CHORUS
We two have paddled in the stream,from morning sun till dine† ;But seas between us broad have roaredsince auld lang syne.
CHORUS
And there’s a hand my trusty friend !And give us a hand o’ thine !And we’ll take a right good-will draught,for auld lang syne.
CHORUS

This is an original composition. We call it I Brush My Filthy Teeth.

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When I was young I could hardly sleep on Christmas Eve. I lay in my bed listening carefully. I wanted to hear the crinkling of wrapping paper, the late night commotion in the living room as my parents put the presents under the tree. I was always leery about the whole Santa story. It seemed a little too outrageous—unlike the story of the Tooth Fairy which I believed eagerly.

A fat white man breaks into your house and leaves presents under your tree in exchange for a glass of milk and a plate of cookies. Come on now. Was that supposed to make me feel safe—knowing that someone could break in so easily?

I didn’t know a lot of fat white men in those days, but the ones that I did know scared me. My friend’s father was very fat and white. He had a beard too. It was brown not white. He talked too loud and I never quite knew when he was joking. I didn’t like him. He scared me.

Sometimes when I was at her house, I’d try to picture her father slipping down our chimney. His large round belly would never fit. I didn’t even think I could fit through the black metal pipe that connected to the wood stove. Once he was in the stove how would he get out?

There were bars on all our windows. Santa couldn’t get in that way. The only other solution is that he had a key. He had a key and strolled through the front door. I didn’t like that idea, so I decided it mustn’t be true. There is no Santa. It was much better than the alternative.

I suspiciously eyed the mall Santas. Their synthetic beards and pillow stuffed guts didn’t fool me. Their hearty laughs rang with phoniness. I refused to sit on their laps. My parents always taught me not to talk to strangers and now they wanted me to stand in line not only to talk to him, but to sit on his lap too. “Craziness,” I thought. “Absolute craziness.”

My sister always went to sit on Santa’s lap without hesitation. I’d make sure she’d tell him what I wanted for Christmas too—just in case.

A few minutes after my husband left for a gig the other day he called me. “Would you do me a favor?” he asked. “Go outside and take a picture of the sky. It’s amazing.”

I had just gotten home from work and had already seen the amazing sky. Even though I grew up with a darkroom in my house and majored in photography for my first couple years of college, taking a picture of the sky hadn’t even cross my mind.

I’ve sold a few things on Craig’s List but up until yesterday had never bought anything from the site. I like saving money as much as the next person, but I’m always afraid of getting ripped off, and Craig’s List seem like as good a place as any to get ripped off.

We needed a digital video camera, so I started looking on Craig’s List for one. When I finally found one that would work for us, I emailed the seller. When he emailed me back, I saw that his email name was Lance Thruster.

“You can call him,” I said as I gave my husband the phone number. “I’m not calling anyone who’s email name is Lance Thruster.”

Lance Thruster lived in a trailer park in Largo. We drove there that night to buy the camera. He showed us the camera. My husband was ready to give him the money without even seeing if it worked. I made him turn it on and show us how to work it.

As we drove home, I held the camera–that wreaked of cigarette smoke–in my lap. It works great. We didn’t get ripped off.

This is what happens when I try to take a nice picture of my mother and grandmother.

The other night I said something to my husband about a crazy lunatic and as soon as I said it I regretted it. I hear people say that all the time and it drives me crazy. What other kind of lunatic is there–a sane lunatic?

When I was little I remember my mother telling me about where babies come from. When she explained to me that the baby actually comes out of a woman’s vagina, I was shocked. I thought that she had taught me that men didn’t have vaginas. Her statement “a woman’s vagina” left me baffled. Maybe I’d been mistaken. Maybe men did have vaginas.

After doing some asking around, I found out that I was right about men not having vaginas. So what did she mean when she said that the baby comes out of a woman’s vagina? After a lot of careful thought and consideration, I decided she was talking about one specific woman.

I pictured a large woman reclined on a bed popping baby after baby out of her vagina. Expectant couples would stand in line waiting their turn to catch a squirming baby as it popped out of her vagina into their open arms.

When my sister was born I discovered this wasn’t true. The image of the woman faded from my memory. I thought I’d been a crazy lunatic to ever have believed something so silly.

Author’s Note: I just spell checked this and my spellchecker told me that the plural of vagina is vaginae. I’m not changing the spelling in this post because vaginae, come on, that just sounds ridiculous.

My cousins owned a bright blue parakeet named Lydia when I was growing up. They let Lydia fly around loose in the house. She liked to perch on the large mirror that hung on the wall in the living room. I remember seeing her white bird poop dripping down the front of the usually gleaming mirror and wanting to run from the house in horror.

My cousins liked to try to get Lydia to perch on their shoulders. Sometimes she’d perch on my oldest cousins head and peck at her hair. “Just hold your finger out and she’ll land on it,” they’d tell me as Lydia flew wildly around the living room.

I didn’t like Lydia. I tried to touch her head once and she bit me with her sharp curved beak. She was always flapping around over head, and that disturbed me.

Flapping and hopping are my two least favorite animal activities. Now that I think of it, I’m also not very fond of barking, biting, scratching or mauling someone to death either. Flapping is the thing that bothers me the most about birds. It’s good to watch them fly from a distance, but as soon as those flapping wings get too close to me I panic.

Lydia didn’t last very long. She got out one day. While I did feel sad when I heard, I was also a little relieved.