Ear Worms 👂🪱

Earworms are strange things. Sometimes, something you hear sets one off. Other times, you wake up with a song already playing in your head, and it simply refuses to go away. Sometimes, though, it takes me a little while to recognize the song.

That happened this morning. Almost as soon as Isabella woke me, the words “Wake me up when…” began running through my mind. At first, I couldn’t remember what came next. When exactly did the singer want to be awakened?

Then it finally hit me: “Wake me up when September ends.”

I paused and wondered, Are those really the lyrics? A quick Google search confirmed that they are not only the lyrics but also the title of Green Day’s 2005 song “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” The song begins:

Summer has come and passed

The innocent can never last

Wake me up when September ends

The song itself is quite sad, but its appearance in my head this morning struck me as funny. I think my earworm was simply trying to tell me that I wasn’t ready to get out of bed. Unfortunately, Isabella is not a patient critter, and she had no intention of letting me sleep until the end of September.

So, I got up and fed her. She woke me long before September ended—we aren’t even halfway through the month.

Note: An earworm is a song or tune that becomes stuck in your head and repeats itself involuntarily.