Posted December 7, 2008

First let me say that kids today have no idea how easy they have things. Back in my day, for example, one of the things that drove me crazy was my grandfather saying, "Back in my day..." at the beginning of every sentence. I would have told him to knock it off, but my parents taught me to respect my elders. I also needed the quarters he pulled from my ear. If I could have figured out how to get them myself, I would have sent grandpa packing.

The other thing that drove me crazy was that there were precious few places to go to get answers to questions. One place was the library. Unfortunately, the most exciting experience I ever had at the library was falling asleep on the bus coming home and getting off in a part of the Bronx known to all the neighbors in our apartment house as "the bad part." I had to talk an old lady, who at the time was deeply involved in a conversation with her wire grocery cart, out of a dime (which she carried in a rolled-up stocking in her bosom) so I could call my father and have him pick me up. All the while I could hear my mother shrieking in the background, "Tell him to wait someplace where there are lots of people. Tell him to wait someplace where there are lots of people." My mistake, apparently, was not waking up in Yankee Stadium.

The other choice was asking my father.

My father could answer any question I could throw at him. Not just the simple stuff, like where do babies come from (His answer: When a man and a woman love each other, mistakes happen.) but questions of a highly technical nature.

ME: How do they make aspirin?

MY FATHER: From ketchup.

ME: If I chew it, it tastes like oranges.

MY FATHER: And oranges. But just a little.

ME: If they make aspirin from ketchup, why are they white?

MY FATHER: That's the mayonnaise.

(I swear we really had this conversation.)

I am reminded of this because the other morning I heard a Christmas song on the radio and, for the life of me, I could not remember its name. (The song's name. The radio's name is Chinese and unpronounceable.) I found this rather frustrating because there are only a handful of Christmas songs, none having been written since Handel died. I surely ought to be able to remember them, especially at this time of year, when one cannot have a latte at Starbucks without hearing all known Christmas songs, often in chronological order.

What I usually do when I can't remember the name of a piece of music is walk around my office repeating a couple of the lyrics over and over, hoping the name of the song, which is not in there anyway, will magically pop into my head. I asked a psychologist about this memory technique, and she explained that such behavior was characteristic of a certain personality type. More than that I am prevented from telling you because of doctor-patient privilege.

After wearing out the rug, I do the same to my friends and family, dragging them into the mess with me, until there are nearly a dozen of us with the same lyrics running around in our heads. We'd probably be stuck like that for several weeks were it not for someone who pipes up, "This is worse than It's A Small World," whereupon "It's a small world after all" becomes surgically implanted in our brains, shoving out the old lyrics and leaving me back where I started from.

This time, however, I decided to do what any child over the age of breast feeding would do. I went to Google. I typed the lyrics "We drank a toast to innocence we drank a toast to now" into Google and here is what I found out (with thanks to Yahoo! Answers).

The title of the song is "Same Auld Lang Syne" (source: Theguywiththebigstick). Or "Auld Lang Syne" (source: Elaine). Or "Another Auld Lang Syne" (source: Annie). Or "Auld Lang Syne I'm Pretty Sure" (source: Anthony).

As you can see, Google makes far more sense than asking my father, who, quite selfishly, never thought to answer my questions with a multiple choice quiz.

The artist is Dan Fogelberg (source: DG), or perhaps, Dan Fogel (source: AKA). It's JC's favorite song, except for "Little Drummer Boy," which has to be by the Vienna Boy's Choir because his/her mother played it on the piano (Editor's Note: she played only the baritone part, not the entire choir).

What's more, according to a link to Wikipedia, I learned "Auld Lang Syne" translates to "long, long ago" or "days gone by" or "no need to wrap it, I'll take it with me."

Thanks to Google, I managed to find all this valuable information in a mere two hours, without falling asleep on the bus or pulling a quarter out of my ear.

However, I do need someone to pass me the ketchup and mayonnaise.

©2008 Jay Douglas