I've always been extremely susceptible to jingles and those pop music melodies that achieve iconic status in our culture. We Will Rock You by Queen comes to mind (and stays there of course, supplanting the folk song that had been there for the past three weeks). When I was younger, friends thought it was fun to sing or hum one line of a song and then wait to see how long it took before I was singing it to myself. They never had to wait longer than three minutes.

In college, I was preparing to study abroad in Nepal and, thinking I could escape this strange habit, decided not to take a walkman or any music with me. The experiment was an utter failure. Instead of peace and quiet, I had the exact same song stuck in my head for the entire semester. The most irritating part of the experience was that I was also unable to remember the name of the band that played it (Was Not Was, but don't think for a moment that they can overpower Queen) and no matter how many times I sang snatches of it to my fellow students, they were unable to rescue me. It was too obscure.

Shortly after that, I began keeping track of what you might call my soundtrack. I fully expected that there would be breaks in the music here and there, but there has not been a single one. In all that time, I have never told anyone about my record keeping, but lately I've been thinking about it. Last year, my niece reached that age and stage in development which seem to produce in everyone an incredible fascination with the Guinness Book of World Records. During one of our family holidays, she was camped out on the couch reading entries aloud to no one in particular. I heard her recite the record for sneezing (978 consecutive days of sneezing attacks-Donna Griffith) and it stuck in my head (along with Frosty the Snowman who was already in there). Up until then, I had always thought of World Records as something that people set out to achieve with incredible perseverance and enormous effort. The sneezing record was a result of a reflex. I realize this shouldn't have been a revelation (Did the tallest man make several attempts at his height?) The only way I can explain it is that I watched too many reruns during my formative years of that Brady Bunch episode with Cindy and Bobby falling asleep on the teeter-totter. Anyway, I started to think about my situation. I had racked up quite a record and wondered how it would hold up. It didn't take me long to realize that, unfortunately, there is no way for me to prove my record, and I doubt the Guinness Book editors would simply take my word for it.

This frustrated me for a brief time, until I began approaching the whole record idea from a different angle. I have a record of the soundtrack not only by its total running time, but also by individual song. I can tell you which song has the most entries (the above mentioned Frosty the Snowman). I can also figure out what might be called my "personal best," or the duration of the longest running individual song (Pop Goes the Weasel, which also happens to be the first on record and therefore has in reality an even longer time than the 2 years, 1 month, 13 days recorded).

I must admit, though, or a while Pop Goes the Weasel had me worried. There is a woman in my office who confessed the other day to a fear. She is afraid, whenever she gets the hiccups, that they will never stop. Hearing her story, I had to acknowledge to myself that, for a time, I was afraid of the Weasel. Two years is a long time to have had him popping out, and he had anytime I was walking. I would try to stop myself, but the tune just came whistling out in time to my footsteps. The beauty of my new approach is that I now find myself rooting for a song-even if it something I used to abhor (for example, the jingle "I've been to Brueners, and now I've seen everything!" is currently giving Frosty a run for his money in the charts). And who knows, maybe someday they'll find a way to listen in and get me into the record book. When they do, I'll be ready.
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