Mondegreen. A word for mishearing things, in particular song lyrics. For instance, as a child my mother thought the prayed went "Hail Mary full of grapes". And recently a child in the audience of a pantomime I was at, thought the Bananarama song Venus included the lyrics "I'm your penis". An easy mistake. I'm not sure there's a word for it but my son seems to have a problem not with hearing the lyrics but with comprehending them. Tonight I discovered he had misunderstood the meaning of I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus his whole life. I thought he was joking. Then I feared he wasn't.Me: "You do realise it was Daddy that Mummy was kissing, right?"
Him: Silence.
Me: "Oliver, lie if you have to.".
Him: Silence.
Me: "Did it never occur to you that a song about a child discovering mum was having an affair with Santa might not be the sort of thing on high rotation in shopping centres in December?"
Him: "Now that you mention it, your interpretation does make a lot of sense."
It turns out he is not alone. According to Buzzfeed this is a thing. I'm not sure that makes me feel any better.
Today's shopping centre visit to buy more lights for the tree and to get the toe nails attended to might be the last for a while considering the "filth" they play. I can only guess at what he thought the song Here Comes Santa Claus was about ....
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