or: How reading led to an ear worm
For the last four days, I’ve had the lullaby Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star stuck in my head.
Having an ear worm isn’t unusual for me. Every morning I have How Much Is That Doggy In The Window? going around as I make my bed. This started many years ago when my dog liked to greet me in the mornings with a big sloppy kiss while I was just waking up. I’d get up, make my bed as I sang this song to her and then take her out for a walk or run (depending which day it was). This has been a hard habit for me to shake and given I’m not disturbing anyone else with my singing, it doens’t matter.
On heavy rotation in my head are also Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell and Paradise By the Dashboard Light and All Revved Up With No Place to Go depending on what I’m doing at the time. Clearly I prefer his older stuff. Quite often music is linked to some sort of activity or memory for me so this is no surprise.
Cooking requires certain types of music and lying around requires a totally different sort.
Now I have a medley of Meatloaf in my head….
Anyway, four days ago I started reading Jim Henson: The Biograpny by Brian Jay Jones. Jim is the guy behind The Muppets, Sesame Street, and as it turns out , about a billion other things too.
The year is 1973 and a little girl has just come into the Seasme Street studios to go through the alphabet with Kermit. She starts with the usual A, B, C…. and as she sings, she replaces a letter with “Cookie Monster” and bursts into fits of giggles. She goes through this multiple times until she and Kermit finally reach the end.
This was interesting to me fo two things. Firstly, this was filmed before I was born yet I clearly remember watching this particular episode.
Secondly, in a what seemed to be a very off-handed way, it was mentioned Kermit and the little girls were singing the alphabet to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Naturally this meant that I then had to sing the alphabet. Low and behold, that was the tune I have been singing the alphabet to my entire life and I had absolutely no idea!
Mind blown.
What else is interesting is of the people I’ve asked, from various countries, they have also been singing the alphabet to the same tune and didn’t realize it was Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.
Good luck getting the tune out of your head now.
* Thanks to quite a few people for the title to this post! According to Wikipedia, the poem was written by Jane Taylor (1783-1824), has five stanzas, first published in 1806 and the music was a French tune which quite a few people have made changes too over the years. Mozart being one of them.
** As a piece of additional trivia that I have learnt from the book, Kermit was initially turquoise and not a frog! He evolved into a frog through being a minstrel for one of the variety shows he appeared on so they kept the collar and adapted it as he evolved.