imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Since a few of you facebookers commented on the little song in Friday's post, I figured I owed it to you to share the story of its origins.

You see, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the church where I grew up hosted an annual Harvest Feast "Talent" Show at Thanksgiving time. Yes, that's right. "Talent." For example, one of my memories of the event is a lovely rendition of "Dueling Banjos," performed instead as "Dueling Noses." It involved a dark church, two people, and two tiny flashlights. I'll let you figure it out from there. However, there were plenty of other acts in the show - backwards piano playing, Blues Brothers impersonating, etc. My family's niche seemed to fall in the "parody" category. And so it was that we rewrote a few tunes from The Sound of Music, dressed up in some old curtains (my dad wore valences fashioned as suspenders, as I recall), and got up and sang (or in my mom's case, accompanied) our newly-rewritten works for our whole church.

I know. Just when you thought my family couldn't get any more awesome.

Because I know you are dying of curiosity (NOT), I will share with you the two other illustrious works we created:

First, "Do Re Mi" became "P I L."

P - We Pilgrims are Puritans

I - Intolerance from which we fled

L - new Land to which we sail

G - God's blessing on our heads

R - the Rock on which our feet...set

I - the Indians are our friends

M - Mayflower - are we there yet??

That will bring us back to the beginning...

You get the idea... And let me tell you, that little "do mi mi, mi so so" part sounds pretty messed up when you exchange the solfege syllables for the letters of "pilgrim"! P L L, L R R, I G G, I M M doesn't exactly have the same ring to it. And I don't remember how we replaced "when you know the notes to sing..."

Anyway, moving on!

Last but not least, "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" became "Go Buy a Turkey."

Sadly, I don't remember many of the words to that one. It was something about... um... buying a turkey.... It started like this:

Go buy a turkey

Search high and low....

And that's all I got. Fam - anyone know the rest??

Well, there you go. Good luck getting "Do Re Mi" out of your head.