My Weirdest Ear Worm Ever

We all get them now and again, it happens to everyone. Ear Worms.

Some song gets in your head, usually when you wake up, and it's stuck there for hours, sometimes all day. It's rarely a song you really like, sometimes it's a song you positively hate. And it's usually not a song you know well, at least that's the case with me. It's usually a song I know one little part of, and that one phrase rattles around in my brain all morning.

I've had some weird ear worms, but today's may be the weirdest. I've had pieces of pop songs from the '80s, old show tunes, and one memorably horrible day, the theme song from "The Real McCoys," a late 1950s sitcom starring Walter Brennan and Richard Crenna, set on a farm. For some reason the singer yammered away just the two lines I could remember (and why could I remember them?) "With Grandpappy Amoes and the girls and the boys and the family known as the Real McCoys!" It was a very long day.

But this morning I've got a doozy. You may have heard this song, but if you're not around my age, the odds aren't good that you have.

"Flat Foot Floogie (with a Floy Floy.)" Seriously. There is such a song. The lyrics, as far as I can recall them, are all nonsense. It's been going through my mind all morning. I can recall my dad singing it once or twice, but that's about it. And certainly I've never heard it or even thought about it for 30 years or more. So why in the world did it suddenly leap unbidden into my head this morning?

I was intrigued, so I looked it up, and it's even stranger.

The song was written in 1938 and recorded by, among others, Louis Armstrong and the Benny Goodman Orchestra. Although I'm pretty sure the only time I've ever heard it was my father singing it. He had an interesting repertoire, and he sang a lot.

What's interesting is that the lyric was originally "Flat Foot FLOOZIE," but it was changed to Floogie so it could be played on the radio. Because saying "floozie" on the public airwaves? Just couldn't do that. We've come a long way since then. Whether that's progress or not, I'll let others judge.

And a floy floy was slang for a venereal disease.

So THAT'S an unusual twist on my morning.