Mysterious Earworm or Creeping Dementia?

Earworm: noun. A tune or part of a song that repeats in one’s mind.

As someone who has a relatively low tolerance for silence, earworms are a fact of life. I’ll stumble across some tune or another, on the car radio, in an elevator, or on a television commercial, and it will bore into my consciousness and hang on long enough to be become annoying. Eventually it fades away or, more likely, it is replaced by another earworm, but not before becoming more than a little tiresome.

I’ve never observed much of a pattern to earworms. Some have lyrics and others not. Some are melodies I like, though usually I like them a little less by the time I shake them. Some are absolute groaners better forgotten but which won’t seem to stay away. What they usually have in common, however, is I can recognize some event that triggered their rise from the bowels of my subconscious to an annoying place of honor at top of mind. This is not the case with my current affliction. For the last week I find myself idling humming, or worse, actually singing, the theme song from the Little Audrey cartoons. I have no idea what brought it to mind but it seems to have staying power.

I vaguely recall there was a cartoon series featuring “Little Audrey”. I don’t recall any specific cartoons. Truth be told, I’d have only a 50/50 chance picking out the correct face in a photo array that included Little Lulu, but I know there were cartoons. They stopped making “Little Audrey” cartoons shortly after I was born but I’m sure they were frequently found on television in those thrilling days of yesteryear. Song lyrics always stick in my memory so I’m not surprised I recall the lyrics, even after decades. But I am fascinated by the quest to learn what prompted them to come to mind after all these years. I’m sure I’ll never know.

 

Wikipedia advises that Little Audrey was a lesser-known knockoff of Little Lulu. That may be true. but I don’t know the lyrics to Lulu’s theme song. And I don’t want to learn them now.