The Recessive Gene: My Pool Needs A Lifeguard

A little DNA humor for you.

My family struggles with an affliction.  There is no test to determine whether you have it or not.  You don’t know you have it, until one time it just happens.  Someone says something innocently to you or around you, and you BURST INTO SONG.

We refer to it as the recessive gene in my family.  It’s more of a sickness, actually.  It’s like a chronic illness-once you have it, it’s yours for life.

Still unclear as to what I am referring to?  Picture it, choir practice, all of the members of the choir are sitting in the pews.  The choir director chooses the song to rehearse and says “Let’s start at the very beginning.”  Which I reply instantly by singing “A very good place to start.”  I can’t help it, it just comes out!

Oh it’s not just limited to songs from The Sound of Music.  I must admit that one is a frequent target though, especially anytime someone says dough, doe, ray, me, sew, so, and tea.  That will result in any number of lines being sung from “Do, Re, Mi” by yours truly or any member of my side of the family.  Other common targets include, oddly enough, Monty Python’s “I’m A Lumberjack and I’m Okay.”

It doesn’t stop there.  It gets much worse.  I am also burdened with the ability to make a song out of anything.  ANYTHING!

I taught preschool for many years.  Every kid in my room had a theme song.  It was like a mini WWE- when they would come around, I’d sing the little song I made up for them.  We had an Adrianna, who was and always will remain one of the most awesome kids of all time.  I made her a theme song from the tune “Alouetta”.

Note to Sallie Mae-This is the one and only time I’ll admit to using the damn degree in this post.  You can still have it back.

Or theme songs. We should all have a theme song.

Some songs are a frequent target for modification.  “My Sharona” by The Kinks has endless possibilities.  Many of those versions I can’t share here.  You say you’re addicted to something, I’ll break out my best Robert Palmer.  “Might as well face it you’re addicted to (insert thing here).”  Obviously some words, like cheese, work a lot better than words like magnesium sulfate.

My husband has this gene too.  Since my daughter seems to have also inherited this affliction at the tender age of three, I guess in this case we can’t call it a recessive gene, now can we?

Some of my proudest song modification moments:

“I kissed a cat and I liked it, his breath smelled just like catnip.” (“I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It”)

“Stop draggin my trash around.”  (“Stop Draggin My Heart Around”)

“Mouse poop in my pantry doesn’t make me happy.” (“Sunshine On My Shoulders”)

How many of you are enough of a Weird Al fan that you either a)  Can’t hear the song without singing the Weird Al version, or b)have NO idea what the actual words are to the songs he has parodied?  I have no idea what the actual words are to “Our Loves In Jeopardy”, “Gangsta’s Paradise”, or “Ridin”.  I certainly can’t hear Avril Lavigne’s song “Complicated” without singing “Why’d you have to go and make me so constipated?”

It’s a sickness…  Do YOU have the recessive gene or some horrible mutation of it?  How does it manifest itself in your life?

BWAH HA HA! Scary, isn’t it?