Whenever I heard the name "Harold Square" from that song, he looked like Mortimer Snerd in my child's mind.
One of the things about being kids was that we heard things literally as they sounded to our ears. For my big personal example, I only have to go back to that old George M. Cohan song, “Give My Regards To Broadway” for an example. Whenever I heard the lyric, “Give my regards to Broadway. Remember me to Herald Square,” I heard the latter part as the name of a person, some guy named “Harold Square” and, to make it worse, “Harold” conjured up the image in my mind of the biggest square I could think of back in the day, a puppet that radio’s Edgar Bergen called “Mortimer Snerd.”
I never thought much about that confusion until I grew older and learned that some other people had done the same thing with many other words and phrases they heard. Former broadcaster Hugh Downs admitted on 20/20 once that he used to hear that old song about “carry moonbeams home in a jar” and think that some guy named Cary Moonbeams was staying home inside a jar.
Wow! It’s a good thing we sometimes get smarter as we age. Sometimes. Remember hearing someone reading Genesis from the Bible for the first time and thinking it was about baseball because the story starts out, “In the big inning?”
"In the big inning ..."
How many people still misunderstand the start of Genesis? Apparently the artist who did this wonderful baseball version of the beginning, at least, thought it once or twice in his or her early life. Wish I could give him or her full credit for a job well done here, but I most apologetically do not know who did the piece. I will make an effort to find out and let you know what I learn, sometime down the road.)
One of my former classmates from St. Thomas High School, the one and only Vito Schlabra, sent me an item an overnight that stirred the inspiration for today’s column on literal childhood thinking. “Judas Asparagus” also comes to us with no author making claim for its contents. As one result, there is no one around to explain if these materials are actually the products of childhood misunderstanding – or simply the adult reconstructions of what easily could’ve been misunderstood by a child as he or she listened to these bible stories long ago.
No disrespect to the Bible is intended here. Anyone who thinks so is already living in a hell that I want no part of. I can’t imagine spending eternity with a group of people who have no sense of humor. One evening with same is bad enough.
At any rate, Judas Asparagus (by our anonymous/unknown author) is both funny and engaging. I hope you agree and, also, regardless of your personal beliefs, that it helps tilt your Thursday even closer to the weekend. Enjoy!
Judas Asparagus
Judas Asparagus
A child was asked to write a book report on the entire Bible. This is amazing and brought tears of laughter to my eyes. I wonder how often we take for granted that children understand what we are teaching???
Through the eyes of a child:
The Children’s Bible in a Nutshell
In the beginning, which occurred near the start, there was nothing but God, darkness, and some gas. The Bible says, ‘The Lord thy God is one, but I think He must be a lot older than that.
Anyway, God said, ‘Give me a light!’ and someone did.
Then God made the world.
He split the Adam and made Eve. Adam and Eve were naked, but they weren’t embarrassed because mirrors hadn’t been invented yet.
Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating one bad apple, so they were driven from the Garden of Eden…..Not sure what they were driven in though, because they didn’t have cars.
Adam and Eve had a son, Cain, who hated his brother as long as he was Abel.
Pretty soon all of the early people died off, except for Methuselah, who lived to be like a million or something.
One of the next important people was Noah, who was a good guy, but one of his kids was kind of a Ham. Noah built a large boat and put his family and some animals on it. He asked some other people to join him, but they said they would have to take a rain check.
After Noah came Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob was more famous than his brother, Esau, because Esau sold Jacob his birthmark in exchange for some pot roast. Jacob had a son named Joseph who wore a really loud sports coat.
Another important Bible guy is Moses, whose real name was Charlton Heston. Moses led the Israel Lights out of Egypt and away from the evil Pharaoh after God sent ten plagues on Pharaoh’s people. These plagues included frogs, mice, lice, bowels, and no cable.
God fed the Israel Lights every day with manicotti. Then he gave them His Top Ten Commandments. These include: don’t lie, cheat, smoke, dance, or covet your neighbor’s stuff.
Oh, yeah, I just thought of one more: Humor thy father and thy mother..
Joshua fought the battle of Geritol and the fence fell over on the town.
After Joshua came David. He got to be king by killing a giant with a slingshot. He had a son named Solomon who had about 300 wives and 500 porcupines. My teacher says he was wise, but that doesn’t sound very wise to me.
After Solomon there were a bunch of major league prophets. One of these was Jonah, who was swallowed by a big whale and then barfed up on the shore.
There were also some minor league prophets, but I guess we don’t have to worry about them.
After the Old Testament came the New Testament. Jesus is the star of The New. He was born in Bethlehem in a barn. (I wish I had been born in a barn too, because my mom is always saying to me, ‘Close the door! Were you born in a barn?’ It would be nice to say, ‘As a matter of fact, I was.’)
During His life, Jesus had many arguments with sinners like the Pharisees and the Democrats.
Jesus also had twelve opossums.
The worst one was Judas Asparagus. Judas was so evil that they named a terrible vegetable after him.
Jesus was a great man. He healed many leopards and even preached to some Germans on the Mount.
But the Democrats and Republicans put Jesus on trial before Pontius the Pilot. Pilot didn’t stick up for Jesus. He just washed his hands instead.
Anyway, Jesus died for our sins, then came back to life again. He went up to Heaven, but will be back at the end of the Aluminum. His return is foretold in the book of Revolution.
Tags: America
The Pecan Park Eagle 
August 19, 2010 at 6:07 pm |
About 30 years ago, I enjoyed reading ANN LANDER’S column. In this particular column, a young wrote to Ann about breaking off his relationship with his girlfriend. It seems that she was not as smart as he thought her to be or wanted her to be; and he came to this conclusion after taking the girlfriend to church with him one Sunday.
As all in the congregation were encouraged to say the LORD’S PRAYER….he decided to just listen to her say the prayer. She said, “Our Father in the heavens HALLOWEEN IS YOUR NAME…” He said he could never get that out of his mind, and did not want a girlfriend who did not know the prayer. Who knows, it may have been a slip of the tongue; she might have known that he was listening to her and decided to act silly or maybe he had a hearing problem.
August 19, 2010 at 9:05 pm |
Hazel:
Thanks for writing. Your wonderful prayer misunderstanding reminds me of one I also had as a kid. The difference is – mine was no accident. It was intentional.
When I was growing up in the East End, we would sometimes go for family visits to see my grandmother in Beeville, Texas, a little town about fifty miles north of Corpus Christi. I loved my grandmother, but there was no one to play with down there, so it didn’t take me long to be wishing for Houston.
As a result, when he went to church down there and got to the part where everyone was saying “The Lord’s Prayer,” I would also be saying “deliver us from evil” and at the same time be thinking “deliver us from Beeville.”
My prayers never seem to phase my dad’s plans. We only came home when he was ready to come home.