Ear Worm

Winner! Daily Flash Fiction 12/9/22 W/C 287

That song had been playing on the internet radio in the car over and over. I had to wonder if some agent was bribing the station to air it every other five minutes.

I now had an ear worm. You know what that is, a stuck song, something once you hear, you cannot get out of your head. You cannot unhear it for days. I sang the song, I now hate the song. The radio gets turned off.

“Want me to turn on the phone?” Jamie rode with me in the morning as we drove to school. “You have some tunes saved.”

“Sure, anything besides that stupid radio.”

So what is the first tune that blasts over the car’s stereo? Egads. Stick a needle in my eye; my toddler’s favorite. ‘Baby Shark’.

This ear worm is burrowing into my brain, sucking out my intelligence as I listen. Idée fixe if you will.

Jamie and I sing along, helpless. We’re captive in the rolling metal cage with that crazy song becoming lodged in the auditory cortex of our brains.

“Change it for heaven’s sake,” I tell Jamie.

A different song comes blasting out of the speakers. So now ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ is permanently implanted. I reached over, grabbed the phone and tossed it out the window.

“Mom! What the heck?” Jamie swiveled around, watching the phone bounce on the ground.

“Ear worms - they make you crazy. I’m saving you from them. You’ll thank me one day.”

Then from the back seat, from his car seat, little Bradley starts singing. ‘Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo, baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo…”

Have mercy, now I’ll be singing that all day.

W/C 287