Does Your Ego Lose Its' Structure From The Faux-Pas From Your Lips?

Greeting, internet friends and neighbors, and those who are related to me by blood, and yet have found cause to examine this blog.

(Probably to see if I am talking about them. Not an unreasonable thought.)

(WARNING: This blog post uses more than one font. Please try not to burst into tears.)

When I was a lad of approximately...10 years old (? Maybe?) I had the great good fortune to be waiting (interminably) in the car, for a parent to return from some incomprehensible adult errand. Not being particularly wicked (must have been my mother, I guess) they left me with a book (my favorite thing) and the radio playing.

And then....across the airwaves...and penetrating the deep concentration/coma into which I customarily lapsed when reading (this was a book of Boy Scout stories, IIRC), came these dulcet tones:

"Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its' Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?"

Lonnie Donegan

He was born in Scotland.

I had not been known for being able to hear a song played once, and then being able to sing it. But THESE lyrics set my toes a' tappin' and my synapses clicking:

Does your chewing gum lose its' flavor on the bedpost overnight?
If your mother says "Don't chew it!" do you swallow it in spite?
Can you catch it on your tonsils, and heave it left and right?
Does your chewing gum lose its' flavor on the bedpost overnight?

On the bedpost overnight!
A dollar is a dollar,
And a dime is a dime
We could sing another chorus,
But we haven't got the time!
On the bedpost overnight!

So, the song stayed with me, and I sang it on those frequent occasions when it seemed to be appropriate.

Decades passed...

I found myself in my middle 20's working in the Admissions Office at Georgia State University, and going to school at night, just as MOST of the clerical staff at the University were doing. Actually, I could take one class on my lunch hour, and another at night, and that was a full graduate load at the time, and I could go home before it got TOO late.

Interacting with the public, a LOT, side by side with other college and graduate students leads, inexorably, to using a lot of words. Articulate bunch, we were; and, in the natural course of things, a certain percentage of those words just went...wrong. Painfully, embarrassingly, WRONG. I hope I don't have to explain that to you, because it's sort of the driving point to this blog post. (Well, that, AND the fact that I'm HORRIBLY behind on reading (and reviewing) these books I've got in queue.)

And so, after some forgotten, but doubtless humiliating, episode, I wrote this song. If you HAVEN'T clicked on the link to the You Tube video, and you don't know the tune, then by all means, click the link NOW.

We'll wait....

Okay, got it?

I DO need to make one linguistic and cultural point: In the language of 1978-ish, a "boner" referred ONLY to a mistake. Southern conversation, especially that found in an institution of higher learning,  did not permit sexual innuendo in mixed company. Such references would have been  treated by all as crude, and might even have resulted in a quiet reprimand from a superior.

Here's my song; please, feel free to imagine four-part harmony:

Does your ego lose its' structure from the faux-pas from your lips?
Does your self-esteem take a nosedive from your fumbled, bumbled quips?
Does saliva from your foot-in-mouth result in falls and slips?
Does your ego lose its' structure from the faux-pas from your lips?

From the faux-pas on your lips...
A boner is a boner,
And a rhyme is a rhyme
I could sing another chorus,
But I haven't got the time,
From the faux-pas from your lips!

And: that's it. There is no point other than passing along a memory, and hopefully, bring a smile.

Peace be unto your house.