Skip to main content

I Almost Got It

Remember how I like to listen to music over and over again? And how I tend to do this at work as a means of helping me concentrate? Well, those two facts are back in order to add just a little more amusement to my life.

A while back, I was working away on something at the office, and I needed to listen to something to help me concentrate. I had heard a new song on the radio that morning that seemed like it'd do the trick, so I fired up YouTube and pulled up "Problem" by Ariana Grande and Iggy Azalea. The song has enough of a beat and up-tempo energy that it would provide useful white noise while I chugged along. As is my wont, though, I ended up listening to that song repeatedly throughout the day.

That's all well and good, but since I listened to it so much, I figured out a decent chunk of the lyrics. Specifically, I heard enough of the rap verse to realize that I thought it was decent. It conveys the feeling of the song pretty well, I think. Anyhow, I was pleasantly surprised by that part of it, so I tucked it away for future reference.

As it turns out, that song has become fairly popular, so future reference has come up very quickly. I tend to hear that song on the radio quite a bit. It's not the type of song I'll hear every five minutes, but it's no surprise if I hear it at least once on my commute to or from work.

One other fact that I should mention is that I have a habit of "singing along" to rap verses I like. I suppose I also do this with other types of music, but it's a much more pronounced habit with rap. I guess I just appreciate the lyrics, and that's what prompts me to attempt this feat.

So, if we combine these two facts, we come to the conclusion that I try to sing along to the rap verse of "Problem" at least once during my commute every day. And for some reason or another, I can never quite get it right. I know all of the lyrics, to the point where I know if I screwed something up. But despite having it quasi-memorized, I will still miss a couple of words or somehow get tongue-tied to miss out on a couple of beats' worth of lyrics. Don't get me wrong, if this was a test, I'd still be pulling 90% scores, but it's still not quite right.

Better yet, I have realized that I seem to always get it slightly wrong, and this is where my OCD kicks in. I have now resolved to get that particular verse right, and every time I hear it on the radio, my brain unconsciously thinks, "challenge accepted." It's even funnier to others because there are three rough stanzas to that verse, and if I get the first couple right, then I start thinking, "wait wait, I'm gonna get it right this time." And most of the time, that slight bit of distraction is enough to throw me off for just long enough to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The cherry on top, however, is that I have managed to replicate that verse perfectly on one, and only one, occasion. So I know that it's possible for me to do it, but I can't seem to reach that elusive goal again. In a way, it's almost worse that I know I can do this. If I knew I wasn't capable of this feat, I might just let it go. But since I've managed to do it once, I relentlessly pursue that goal again, if for no other reason than to prove that it wasn't a fluke the first time around.

I'm not going to let this song get the better of me, I tell you.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

From Scratch 2

A few months ago, I tried my hand at making home-made dumplings . It came out all right, and it was definitely passable for a first attempt, but we always said that we should have another go at it. After all, if we liked it all right when we made it with no first-hand experience, it should come out even better after having at least one rep under our belt, right? We found out this weekend. First of all, the Mild Wife helped with the dough preparation this time around. I knew to be wary of making the dough too sticky this time around, but because she has more experience with baking, she was able to guide us through the pitfalls. What really surprised me was just how little water you can/should add at a time. We're talking about a tablespoon at a time when you're trying to make a ball of dough. I mean, I knew not to overwater it from previous experience, but it still surprised me to add in that little water at a time. Still, there was a method to this ( including the trusty sanduk...

Inside and Outside

As I've mentioned before, the Mild Wife and I invested in a sewing machine during the pandemic. It was the most basic model we could find, but it was good enough for what we needed: to make a few masks. And now, over a year later, I still think that it was a good investment. Interestingly, even with restrictions being lifted a bit, we still find that we need masks. Some stores still require them, and neither of us wants to be in a position where we needed a mask and didn't have one. So, we still have to wear and wash them. And even though we've never run out of clean masks to wear, we did notice that we were close a couple of times. So, I recently broke out the sewing machine to make a few more masks. When we initially invested in supplies, we bought a pack of fabric squares. We figured we weren't going to need super high quality, and having a bunch of squares would give us options in case one of us screwed up (read: me). That also gave us the ability to add a little v...

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...