Donuts make my brown eyes blue

The teen has declared that ‘when’ we buy her a kitten (shortly after she trains Nellie the dog not to eat it, which will likely be soon after salt blossoms at the rate she's going) she is going to name it Tequila.

My fourteen year old has never (I hope) encountered tequila, let alone partaken of the dubious delights of slammers, laybacks or lick, sip, sucks (try saying that after a couple of quick ones – hell, I can barely type it). So, out of all the possible names for kitties, chooses Tequila because…?

‘It’s a bird’s name. In a book. Miss Hunt told us.’

‘Ri-i-ight…?’

‘You know, Tequila Mockingbird.’

I laughed til wine almost came out of my nose.

When I relayed the story to my boss, she confessed that she thought for years Elvis’ ‘Return to sender’ was ‘Return Lucinda’.

(I’m told) it’s really quite embarrassing when you walk around singing ‘Slow talking Walter, the fire-engine guy’ for thirty-something years only to discover that the lyrics are actually, ‘Smoke on the water, fire in the sky.’

Similarly, I can never hear the Go-Gos Our lips are sealed without recalling one DJs confession that he had always heard ‘Alex the seal’ (Wayne’s World fans probably think ‘islands of seals’).

Greg from Dharma & Greg has a habit of mucking up the words. He says: ‘I want to rock and roll all night... And part of every day!’ Dharma tries to correct him (‘...Party every day’). Greg drunkenly replies, ‘If you party every day, how can you get enough rest to rock and roll the next night?’ Hmmm.

There are other mishearings: Round John Virgin crops up every Christmas, just about every nine-year-old finishes the Lord's Prayer with ‘and lead a snot into temptation’, and the number of times ‘Jesus’ crops up as ‘cheeses’ in hymns, prayers and elsewhere boggles the mind. Brie and cheddar, anyone?

I am also amused by the following (I’m not going to include any from James Reyne – he mumbles so much we’ll be here all day):
• ‘Rock heel sway, talk heel sway’ instead of ‘Walk this way, talk this way’ (from the Aerosmith song)
• ‘Australians are all ostriches’ rather than ‘Australians all, let us rejoice’ (if you dson’t know where that’s from, move to Botswana)
• ‘Take your pants off and make it happen’ instead of ‘Take your passion and make it happen’ (from Flashdance)
• ‘This is ground control to Major Tongue’ – which should be ‘This is ground control to Major Tom’ (from Space Oddity)
• ‘She's got electric boobs, her mom has two’ instead of ‘She's got electric boots, a mohair suit’ (from B-b-benny and the Jets)
• ‘Hold me closer, Tony Danza’ – actually, ‘Hold me closer, tiny dancer’ (from the Elton John song).

These kinds of mishearings or misinterpretations are called ‘mondegreens’. Some chick called Sylvia Wright coined the term back on the ‘50s after mishearing ‘laid him on the green’ as ‘Lady Mondegreen’. The term was enshrined in the 2008 update of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

Wikipedia reports that the top three mondegreens reported to ‘mondegreen expert’ (I kid you not – imagine his business card!) Jon Carroll are:
• ‘Gladly, the cross-eyed bear’ (from a hymn) instead of ‘gladly the cross I'll bear’
• ‘There's a bathroom on the right’ instead of ‘There's a bad moon on the rise’ (the line at the end of each verse in Bad Moon Rising)

...and the top mondegreen of all time:

• ‘'Scuse me while I kiss this guy’ rather than ‘'Scuse me while I kiss the sky’(from Purple Haze).

To sum it all up, Sylvia reckons: ‘The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original.’

Tequila Mockingbird? She might be on to something there. Cheers!

Image: federico stevanin