Scary rabbit-head girl, Seattle, Wa.

Scary rabbit-head girl, Seattle, Wa.
Originally uploaded by inger h

I have some incredibly detailed memories about being a kid.

In some ways these are a little disturbing; I can recall eerie details about being locked in the car by one terribly incompetent (and philandering) baby-sitter while she "visited" her boyfriend at a construction site in Orinda or some damn place. I can recall what the road looked like blurring past as I almost fell out of a Karmen Ghia at 6 yrs old. I can also recall the kindly bakers at the Alpha Beta store who would give us sugar cookies just for saying "Please" and the landlords who gave us miniature candy bars every time we brought up the rent check.

But I digress. What I mean to remember now are the strains of AM radio, slinking out of the speakers in my mom's Datsun Honeybee, and the particular ability that kids have to hear mondegreens.

Part of the problem of course is this: kids don't know a lot. At the age of 5 or 6 kids are still really learning their language and figuring out how language works and how metaphors work and other complicated things. It's understandable that sometimes you hear things that don't make sense and just shrug at it. So it was with me and the radio.

I almost don't want to learn the real lyrics to Elton John's "Daniel" -- just hearing one snippet of that song casts me back to Mohr Lane and the Del Rio Circle and some crazy kid-world that I still recall so sharply.... it's one of those funny things; I'm almost afraid that if I understand that song I'll forget those memories and lose all that knowledge forever.

I made this mistake a few years ago, finally succumbing to the curiosity about what the hell Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville was about-- I can't even remember now what I thought this song was about when I was a kid, but it was a damn sight more interesting than the real thing. Lost jigger of salt?!? Give me a break!

There was some other song from the same time, I thought the man was singing about his sadness about being left with seven hundred children... I understood later that it was just seven hungry children.

Don't tell me. I don't want to know.