My Point...And I Do Have One

You think, “Why have I been singing ‘Wipe in the Vaseline?’ How many people have heard me sing ‘Wipe in the Vaseline?’ I am an idiot.” But it sounds like that, you know?
    There are certain songs you just know have parts where there aren’t any real lyrics, because nobody can figure them out even after hearing the song over and over and over again. For instance, that Aretha Franklin song “Respect.” Everybody gets the part:
“R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Find out what it means to me. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”
But what follows is anybody’s guess. To me it’s either
“Da cha, te ee cee tee. Ho!”
or
“Something about a tee-pee. Ho!”
But then everybody is back on board with
“Sock it to me. Sock it to me. Sock it to me.”
    Sometimes it’s just as embarrassing to get the words to a song right. I think in the seventies we really had some songs that were just idiotic songs, and the lyrics were clear as can be. Do you remember that song by Three Dog Night, “Joy to the World”? It started off with “Jeremiah was a bullfrog.” It was catchy, so you wanted tosing. And then we were hooked, and we were just singing along … 
“Jeremiah was a bullfrog. Was a good friend of mine. I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine.”
    Of course that made perfect sense to us. Why should we question that? We’ve all had friends who were frogs. We didn’t fully understand what they were saying, but if it seemed like they wanted you to help them drink some wine, you did it. They would always have some mighty fine wine with ’em, too. Frogs could get ahold of that stuff.
    B ut back to feeling like an idiot. Two places that tend to bring out the “Oh my God, I’m such a nincompoop” in most of us are elevators and public bathrooms. Now, the difference between an elevator and a public bathroom is … Wait. If you don’t already know the difference between an elevator and a public bathroom, nothing I say is going to be of much help. In the best-case scenario, you’re going to be standing in a stall for a long time, wondering why you’re not going anywhere. I don’t even want to think about the worst-case scenario.
    When we’re inside an elevator we feel we have to look above us at the floor numbers changing, as if it’s by the force of our will that the elevator is rising. If you want to make others in the elevator feel uncomfortable, stay facing the back wall after you enter. The downside of this little gag is that you’re pretty likely to miss your floor.
    We always do this: we walk up to an elevator, someone’s already there, they’re waiting, they’ve pushed the button, the button is lit. We walk up and push the button, thinking, “Obviously you didn’t push it correctly. I’ll have to push it myself.
Now
the elevator will come.” Then someone else walks up and they push the button again. Suddenly you’re offended. You want to say, “You idiot, Ipushed it, he pushed it.” Then, to the original pusher, “Can you believe people?”
    Or, if you go to the elevator by yourself, you push the button, you wait for the elevator to come, the elevator doesn’t come. You push the button six more times. Like that’s helping. As if the elevator’s thinking, “Oh, a half dozen people are there now. I better hurry. I thought it was just that one woman. I was resting. Oh no, I …, I could lose my job! I could become stairs!”
    In a public bathroom you’re in your own little individual private stall, actually going to the bathroom. For some reason either you forgot to lock the door, or the lock is gone. Suddenly, a perfect stranger opens the door on you. They look at you. You always look at them the same way (sort of a cross between a deer caught in the headlights and a deer caught doing something else, I’m not sure what). They close it immediately and always say, “Oh, I’m sorry.” Then we say, “It’s okay.”
    We don’t mean this. I think we’d be surprised if they turned around and came back in, actually. “Oh-oh!” “You said it was all right. Hey everybody, come on in! She said it was okay! Get Julie! This is Julie. And you are? There’s no need to holler. Let’s go, Julie. Yeah, she said it was okay, I wouldn’t have just walked in.”
    It’s just so scary if there’s no lock on that door; you’re so vulnerable at that time. You’re scared someone’s going to push the door open on you. Imagine if someone had an aerial view of what we looked like in there,