COLUMN: ‘Clack, clack’ go the grandmas
I have just witnessed something wholly disturbing. I decided to clear my mind by taking a brief jaunt around the Taggart Student Center and perhaps getting a snack. Upon reaching the lower level of the building, I heard the most uninviting racket imaginable.
Yes, I saw two white kids attempting to rap to a crowd in The Hub! When I saw the pair, I was immediately relieved that Blaine and John were not the perpetrators, because they normally are the ones making an unusually loud and irritating scene. Somehow content, yet still clearly jarred by a disturbing lack of euphonious ability, I now feel more ready than ever to write.
But now I can’t seem to get that crap out of my head. I guess this brief experience will actually prepare me for the threatening holiday season that awaits all of us at the end of the semester. Almost as soon as pencils are to be put down on the last day of exams, we will be immersed in the “splendor” of holiday spirit. I guess that’s a fancy way to describe the annoying stress commonly associated with earworm syndrome, or in other words, all those Christmas songs endlessly repeating in our minds for the next month.
Earworms have nothing to do with the plaguing moth larvae, Heliothis Zea, that frustrate Midwestern corn farmers every summer. Rather, it is the scientific term used to describe when tunes and words like, “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow” stay in your brain long enough that you feel compelled to shout obscenities at everyone driving cars equipped with ski racks. Hmmm – it would be cool, though, if there were moths that sung things to people, just to make them mad.
All of us periodically get angry with skiers or moths, but more importantly we all suffer the effects of earworm syndrome. Don’t you love it when all you can think about for days are boughs of holly because “Fa la la la la – la la la la” just can’t seem to flee your cranial cavity? Like Mercedes and bratwurst, we get earworm from the Germans who made up a word, “ohrwarm” which literally means, “This song sucks now.” So, inevitably, now our society has something else to blame on the Germans.
We all live with earworms, and there’s not much you can do about getting them, so my philosophy is if I have to suffer, let everyone agonize with me. That’s why I might just come up behind you one day and lightly sing, “And if you ever saw it, you would even say it glows,” shortly before running away, and emitting a raucous laughter. So, now as a writer, and being currently condemned to listen to holiday tunes, I feel the necessity during the rest of this column to pass my earworms on to you, in excelsis deo!
It really never feels like Christmas is approaching until you attempt to do a little shopping and hear pa rum pum pum pum. Daytime shopping at the malls is the most fun, especially while obnoxious teens are still in school. This is the time when all the old ladies are out in force. While I am wholly unsure why during this age of technology, hordes of cheek-pinching old women still swarm the malls before Christmas; I can certainly make an educated guess.
There must be some deep subconscious urge in their souls to experience the continual deafening screech of metal hangers sliding across metal racks in the clothing departments. Filling their year-long insatiable desire to shop, this squeak along with the raucous hanger to hanger “clack” creates an aura of satisfaction and the hearty feeling of a job well done. Well, at least until they go back next week to return everything they bought in search of a far “superior” bargain, and a partridge in a pear tree.
I won’t discuss all my Christmas pet peeves, but one certainly needs to be mentioned. What is the deal with those Salvation Army bell ringers? As if impeding entrance into stores by blocking the doorway wasn’t enough to let you know of their whereabouts, they ring their bells incessantly like an epileptically seized cow. “We know you are there with your big red bucket,” I often feel like saying, “You don’t have to ring that in my face!”
The only thing possibly more annoying would be if they had a whistle, or even worse a foghorn. BRRRRMMMP! “Give us money!” – No bloody way. One day I will offer the person 10 bucks to not ring that dang bell for the next half hour, so the auditory world can be spared – yup, spared from bells, but not from earworms (tee hee).
Pa rum pum pum pum.
Garrett Wheeler is an engineering student. If any of the tunes discussed above are now stuck in your head, please contact the editor and don’t send any e-mails to wheel@cc.usu.edu.