| The Most Embarrassing Song on my iPod A couple months ago, I was sitting in a meeting full of my work colleagues, most of whom I still did not know, and frankly, I was bored. So since I can check my e-mail on my new phone, I checked it. And in my e-mail there was one of those silly writing prompts: What's the most embarrassing song on your iPod? Hmm, I thought. What IS the most embarrassing song on my iPod? Not that I would be all that embarrassed if somebody looked at my playlists. I mean, who cares, right? Then I realized that I could actually check, because the kids and I had just loaded a whole bunch of songs onto my new phone. And actually there would be some at least mildly embarrassing ones, because we had put the kids' entire collection on there, including the SchoolHouse Rock catalog and some of Weird Al Yankovic's greatest hits, and I had a bunch of old Allan Sherman songs, because I loved his records when I was a kid (he's the guy who did "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah"). And I have a novelty song by Cheryl Wheeler called "The Potato Song" that I adore. So I started scrolling through the songs, using my finger on the touchscreen (isn't that cool?! I'm so technologically able), except I hadn't quite gotten the hang of the whole touchscreen scrolling finger flicking thing, and my finger got stuck mid-scroll and selected something and suddenly the room was BLASTED with the song "Hey Ya," by Outkast, like this: ONE TWO THREE UH!
MY BABY DON'T MESS AROUND BECAUSE SHE LOVES ME SO AND THIS I KNOW FO SHOOOOOO' really, really unbelievably loud, and everybody started laughing UH! BUT DOES SHE REALLY WANNA
BUT CAN'T STAND TO SEE ME WALK OUT THE DOOOOOR Help! But my mind went blank, and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off DON'T TRY TO FIGHT THE FEELIN'
BECAUSE THE THOUGHT ALONE IS KILLING ME RIGHT NOOOOOW and my brain is screaming, Turn it off! Turn it off! while I'm stabbing at things, buttons, screen UH! THANK GOD FOR MOM AND DAD
and my brain is also screaming, I don't know how! I don't know how! and the man standing up in the front, with the chalk in his hand, tells me to turn it off (as if this hasn't occurred to me) FOR STICKIN TWO TOGETHER
and Think! How do you turn it off?! Think! CAUSE WE DON'T KNOW HOOOOOWW
Maybe I could pause it? UH!
It took the lifetime of a mayfly, but finally, I got it paused. Once it was paused, I lowered the volume fully and then turned off the phone entirely — which, for some reason, hadn't worked when the phone was screaming. Then somebody said, "OK, now stand up and introduce yourself!" Har har. I couldn't even laugh about it. I wanted to cry. I wanted to DIE. I stared at my desk, incapable of making eye contact with anyone, for the rest of the meeting. I'm sure I was so red in the face I looked like roadkill. But now I know — I definitely know — what is the most embarrassing song on my iPod. |
| —Leigh Anne Jones |