Ringo was the catchy one.
I know some people who never get songs stuck in their heads. These people amaze me; it’s like I’ve discovered people who envision what I think of as the color blue, when I say “chocolate-brown.”

So I am meant to believe that these folks pass their days and never, ever find themselves humming the verses of “Yellow Submarine” under their breaths some mornings? Never, while walking from car-to-desk at nine a.m. (or to 10th floor of skeletal construction site at 6 a.m.;), mutter, without really thinking about it:
“Dum-dah-Duuuhhhhm
Da-dum-da-dum…”

And then again midmorning, while walking to corner coffeeshop, thinking about doing a load of laundry after work or the third verse of the sonnet he or she is composing that day, or that lazy underling he/she has to fire-Never, suddenly, into one’s head, underneath/over all this, bursts the chorus of said, catchiest-of Beatles-tunes:
“Doo-doo-doo-
doo-ti-do-do-do-do-doo…”

Never, never, never??

These are the same sorts of people who give you blank stares when you talk about not knowing what to make for supper tonight, or losing socks in the dryer.

It just doesn’t happen to them, you see.

There are some gaps you can bridge, but I think this one would be quite a toughie for someone at the skill level of, say, Jimmy Carter.

We’ll take a boat to the land of dreams
Anyway. There are some songs I would really, really like to erase from my memory forever: have sort of an Eternal Sunshine of the Annoying-Song-Free Mind kind of operation performed, if you will. No qualms at all; put me under that brain-ray, I beg of you, so I can lose the profusion of middle-school chorus songs that were carved - in indelible marker - into my head by those hours of rehearsal back when I was 12.

No more “Singin’ the Red, White and Blues!” Medley from 7th grade that will still run from start to finish, I swear to you, some nights while I’m walking my dog in the otherwise sweet, sweet silence of the evening.

I sang a solo in that medley, you see: part of “The Basin Street Blues.”
(((Sassoon.)))
And I can sing it still.

And when I’m 95 years old (and knock wood, someday I will be), I won’t know what year it is. I’ll have no idea who my own nieces or their children are. But if you go up to that wizened woman with the ancient (stretched-out beyond any hope of identification) tattoo on her wrinkled chest and sing, softly, into her ear,
“Won’t you come along with me-?”
You’ll get an answer I can predict now, 69 years ahead of that moment:
“To the Mississippi?”