WoTD: mondegreen

Definition: a word or phrase resulting from a misinterpretation of a word or phrase that has been heard.

Seated against the wall, pinned flat by the music, my spinal fluid oscillating to the pounding pop beat, I mimed songs from my adolescence and bobbed my head to a rhythm long forgotten. Alone and off to the side, I blended into the faux brickwork and maintained just enough motion so as to guarantee invisibility. Over the crackling speakers and vacuous hiss of forty year olds reliving their youth, Cyndi Lauper screeched and whined about how girls just wanted to have fun. Back then, like now, I struggled to unravel the definition of the three letter word. While my peers had danced, sang and kissed their way through their high school years, I, in comparative solitude, read books, wrote stories and imagined freedom. Not a lot had changed in those intervening years.

"C'mon, get up and dance. You're missing all the fun."

I smiled at the owner of the voice, a woman I hardly recognised. We had been friends once, long ago. I had a hazy recollection of school hallways, lockers and whispered words. She fitted in there somewhere.

The track changed, on came Madonna with her swooning Spanish ballad, la isla bonita. The woman sat beside me, her thighs touching mine. She held a glass with shimmering, bubbling liquid and her breath smelled sour. We sang together, fumbling the words.

"... a young girl with eyes like potatoes," I sang, loudly. The woman leaned in, laughed, her forehead momentarily resting on my shoulder as she mimicked the words. The deliberate lyrical mondegreen built a bridge between us and I remembered then what had connected us as children. I smiled.