ADVERTISEMENTS
Becoming Alaskan
A Blog about Life at the End of the Road
Ever wonder what it's like to give up everything and move to bush Alaska? I didn't. Not until I met my future husband on an internet dating site. After two years of dating, I took one giant plunge and left my home, career, family and friends in British Columbia to join him in bush Alaska. We later moved to Homer and now live beside stunning Kachemak Bay. I am Sarah in Alaska (but not that Sarah). These are my stories.
Ear Worms
Ear worms. I'm not talking actual worms wriggling about in the canals of your ears. I'm talking a song, or a little snippet of a song that get stuck in your head and won't get out.
Over the past week, I've noticed that Toddler's been plagued by ear worms. Earlier this week it was "This land is my land." I can tell that one frustrated her because she didn't know the words to the song and was plagued by the first verse. Over and over she went with "this land is my land, this land is your land, from California to la la la la la."
Yesterday, it was Kookaburra.
"Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree eating all the gumdrops he can see. Stop Kookaburra! Stop Kookaburra! Leave some there for me!"
Over and over she sang that one verse of Kookaburra. After a day of hearing it, I was curious about the whole song. So, in a spectacular parenting fail, I opened Spotify and looked it up. As soon as the song started, Toddler looked at me like I kicked her and ran full speed to her room yelling, "nooooooooo!". I found her hiding under her blankets humming her ear worm. I felt like a jerk.
What's a mom to do? I had to help the kid. Bad enough she had an ear worm then I had to unintentionally made it worse. I realized that if I made an even bigger deal out of the ear worm, it would stay longer so I stealthily set about righting my wrong.
Onto Bing I went. I came across a BBC news article on how to get rid of ear worms and started running down the list.
The first suggestion was to sing Simply the Best by Tina Turner. So I sang the only lyrics I knew. Toddler just shook her head. Either she didn't like the song or I sing a terrible rendition. Honestly, I sing a terrible rendition.
The next was to visualize your ear worm song playing on a record player and imagine yourself lifting the needle. I had a laugh at that one. It was going to take me ages to explain to Toddler what a record player was.
Another suggestion: long division or difficult Sudoku puzzles. Nope, not going to work. BBC was letting me down.
Next on the list of search results, The Health Sciences Institute. They suggest replacing your ear worm with another song. I wondered if that's replacing one ear worm with another? It was worth a shot so I started playing Toddler songs that I didn't think she'd heard before to distract her from her noxious Kookaburras.
I think it worked because she eventually stopped singing. Kookaburras didn't invade our breakfast this morning and they didn't show up on our morning drive to preschool. Yay! You know where Kookaburras showed up? In MY head on the drive home from pre school. Damn.