Christmas Bells Aren't the Only Things that Jingle

Folks, the wheels have come off the wagon again. Last night Mr. Wicke and I attended a fun and festive Christmas party with many other couples from our church. We've lived here for three years now, but you know, it takes about that long to get to know people and let them get to know you. Last night was going great. I mingled, had some great conversations, visited with a couple of girls that I don't know that well, and didn't say anything too embarrassing. Overall, I was handling myself pretty well.

And then the games started.

This is always a dangerous area for me. I love games, and I'm competitive, and I don't have a self-edit button, and that combination doesn't always work in my favor, if you know what I mean.

The game in question goes like this: The group is divided into two teams. Someone picks a word out of a hat and you have to come up with a song containing that word and be able to sing at least 6 words. The teams go back and forth until one team can not think of a song in the allotted time.

Now, I'm a singer and known to be somewhat musical, so comments were flying like, "Well, we've got Laurel on our team," and "Okay, as long as Laurel can be our singer," and I'm saying, "You guys I'm really bad at this game." And I really am. I can sing, but I'm terrible at retrieving ANY information when there is a time limit, let alone lyrics mid-song. My brain literally quits functioning. But they didn't believe me.

We did okay on the first two words which were Santa and bells, and I even pulled through with "this is Santa's big scene." Our team was ahead 2-0, and I began to feel pretty good. The next word was jingle. We gave them the old "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way..." They retorted with "Jingle bell, jingle bell jingle bell rock..." Back and forth it went. At some point we even pulled out the big guns with "I've got a little change in my pocket going jing-aling-aling..." But they proved a tough oppenent here, and when they quickly returned, we drew a blank.

Jeff Lee began the obnoxious count-down, "10, 9, 8, 7..."

And somewhere in the dusty files of my brain I recalled something with a jinle-ling...if I could only...something from around 1983...what was it?

"5,4,3,2..."

"I've got it! Wait!" And I began to sing, loudly, "My jingle-ling, my jingle-ling, I want you...to..play...with..." And as the dust was being blown off that old file, I began to realize that something was not right...

Unfortunately so did a lot of other guests, mostly men who also attended Jr. High apparently. "It's not jingle-ling. It's dingle-ling."

In .01 seconds the pages of that old neglected folder were suddenly clear and readable to my mind's eye, and I had total recall:

When I was an itty bitty boy,
My grandmother gave me a cute little toy.
Silver bells hanging on a string
She told me it was my ding-a-ling-aling

My ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling
I want you to play with my ding-a-ling.
My ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling
I want you to play with my ding-a-ling.

I can now recall other verses, but I will spare you the sordid details.

"Laurel, that's a dirty song!"

I couldn't respond because I was hunched over in uncontrollable fits of laughter accompanied by deep blushing.

That was pretty much the end of the game for me. Oh, we stumbled along, but I never did recover my confidence. Once again I had fallen victim to my own exuberence. So much for my good impression.

Oh, well, there's always next year.