North Star Writers Group

What makes it so frustrating is that most of the time the songs that fill my head as I peel myself from bed aren’t even favorites of mine. One morning last week it was the theme from the old Addams Family TV series. Another day it was The Beer Barrel Polka. All day I sang “Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun.”

Yup. I got some stares.

What I wonder is, where do these songs come from?

Does God, in His infinite wisdom, say “I think I’ll make him wake up this morning humming the 1812 Overture “? Does He get some kind of thrill hearing me sing, “GaryIndianaGaryIndianaGaryIndianaGaryIndiana” at the top of my lungs? I mean, if the tune was the last one I’d heard before going to bed the night before, I could understand it.
But it never is because the radio stations I listen to don’t play the Addams Family theme or the 1812 Overture.

So, if neither God nor FM radio is the perpetrator, what is the origin of these songs? Maybe there’s a vast yet-unexplored area of the universe where all the songs that have ever been recorded are whizzing around just waiting to fall like bad breath on unsuspecting folks as they sleep.

Whatever the source, these songs are harder to shake than an obnoxious relative. Try as I may, I can’t get rid of the tunes I wake up trilling. And it’s starting to be a source of embarrassment.

During an interview, I suddenly break into a chorus of that song from The Wizard of Oz, the one that begins, “If I only had a brain . . . ” When the woman in the drive-up window at a fast-food restaurant asks me if I’d like a cherry pie with my order, she hears, “Down by the old mill stream, where I first met you . . . “ The cashier at the bank has heard me hum the theme from Star Wars. The guy who fills my car at the gas station has had to endure my somewhat fractured rendition of Blue Suede Shoes.

I wish there was some logical reason for me to wake up singing the songs I wake up singing.
But there isn’t.

If it’s January, you can bet I’ll be crooning Autumn Leaves. If it’s October, the song in my heart— and on my lips —will probably be Easter Parade. Next July I’ll be the guy singing, “Here’s comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus . . .”

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