We used to play a game in our family in which one of us would sing the first word of a song, and the others would guess what song it was. I know it doesn\u2019t sound as if it would work, but it did. If no one got it at first, we\u2019d go around again with two words. Then three. And then four. Eventually someone would guess correctly; it was just a matter of time.<\/p>\n
The challenge was that if you were singing, you had to remember the lyrics, you had to remember the melody and you had to sing loudly. Or not. Which was of course what made it so entertaining. There was inevitably much gut-wrenching laughter, and much poking fun.<\/p>\n
I remember, however, only one particular song and the singer who sang it.<\/p>\n
It was my grandmother. When it was Nani’s turn this one evening, she thought only briefly and then, with a wicked smile on her face, sang out a single syllable\u00a0\u201cKing!\u201d<\/em> in an ambiguous tone that gave us little hint of the melody.<\/p>\n We were, of course, stumped. All of us\u2026 except the three Sisty Uglers, who knew their mother and were able, thru some incredible act of time travel and musical extrapolation, to deduce the specific song: Gilbert and Sullivan\u2019s The First Lord\u2019s Song,<\/em> the first verse of which is<\/p>\n When I was a lad I served a term He polished up the handle of the big front door.<\/p>\n I polished up that handle so carefully He polished up that handle so carefully Now, you will notice that the word king<\/em> appears nowhere, as it indeed appears nowhere in the song. And even if you allow for the substitution of queen<\/em> for king<\/em>, you will see that the royal title does not occur as the first word. Yet in spite of that, her daughters guessed the song<\/em>. They guessed the song from the wrong word sung in the wrong place to virtually no tune at all!<\/p>\n We laughed so hard, our sides did ache. And my grandmother won the game!<\/p>\n Happy Birthday, Nani.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We used to play a game in our family in which one of us would sing the first word of a song, and the others would guess what song it was. I know it doesn\u2019t sound as if it would work, but it did. If no one got it at first, we\u2019d go around again […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3832"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3832"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3842,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3832\/revisions\/3842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
As office boy to an attorney’s firm.
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,
And I polished up the handle of the big front door.<\/p>\n
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen’s Navy.<\/p>\n
That now he is the Ruler of the Queen’s Navy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n