Word Substitutions
Every now and again I see something, or hear a song, that instantly reconnects me to my much younger days. For example, a couple of years ago my better two-thirds and I spent a few days enjoying Provincetown and some favorite spots on Cape Cod. Those of you who have been to P’town will likely recall Cabot’s Candy Store on Commercial Avenue. For the rest of you, this store is a time machine as it sells, in addition to the expected assorted flavors of salt water taffy and fudge, novelty candies from long ago. The kinds that make one wonder, “They still make these?” Sugar Babies, Necco Wafers, Mallo Cups, Wax Lips, candy cigarettes, and so on, to name but a few. Seeing some of these, especially black licorice string wheels coiled around a small hard candy, made me smile both inside and out.
Similarly, while listening to a satellite music station during my early morning treadmill time very early this past Sunday morning, I heard—very possibly for the first time in decades–The New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral.” Immediately, I was fourteen years old again and filled with all the confidence and dreams I had back then. It was a most pleasant couple of minutes. Doubtless, each and every one of you has enjoyed similar “blasts from the past.”
In a similar vein, not an hour ago I read an online exchange between two friends who were playing a word substitution game and, again, I was immediately transported to days long gone. The game they were playing involved substituting one word in a movie’s title to any other word and seeing how the meaning changed. As soon as one posted “Gone with the Winnebago,” the other shot back with “A Man for all Seasonings.” This was followed by “Apocalypse Cow” and “They Shoot Halvah, Don’t They?”
As with hearing “Winchester Cathedral,” I was fourteen years old again and hearing my friend Kenny tell me he’d overheard his brother on the phone telling someone that any song title could be made very suggestive simply by adding the words “between the sheets” into the song’s title. We then spent who knows how much time cackling over the new song titles we came up with, made especially funny in retrospect inasmuch as at that age, neither Kenny nor I had the vaguest clue what transpired between the sheets. We just atavistically knew that if we acted knowledgeable, we’d be perceived as being cool—at least to each other.
And so, channeling the fourteen-year-old brain, I thought that it could be somewhat amusing to play this word game by choosing a random noun and substituting it into a handful of titles I already selected from the Unitarian Universalist hymnal, “Singing the Living Tradition.” To be fair, I took the word that came up when I went to randomwordgenerator.com (not a joke–this is a legitimate Website). The word that came up: secretary. I’m already grinning and, hopefully, you will soon be, as well.
1. “May Nothing Evil Cross This Secretary”
2. “I Brought My Secretary to the Sea”
3. “For the Beauty of the Secretary”
4. “I Am That Great and Fiery Secretary”
5. “We Sing of Golden Secretaries”
6. “Ring Out, Wild Secretaries”
7. “Lo, the Secretary Awakens Again”
8. “Nearer, My Secretary, to Thee”
9. “Mysterious Secretary, Source of All”
10. “Where is Our Holy Secretary?”
11. “For All That is Our Secretary”
12. “Our Secretary is But a Single Gem”
13. “Precious Secretary, Take My Hand”
14. “I Sought the Secretary in Summer”
15. “With Joy We Claim the Growing Secretary”
Let’s face it, is there anyone among us who wouldn’t be moved to tears to hear our multi-talented Music Leader, Amy Buckley, sing “I’ve Got Secretaries Like a River”? You’ll have to excuse me now; I’m having a moment …
This week’s Street Advertising Smile:
