tres bon!

today during storytime, i was reading a story in which a little boy says, “oui! tres bon!” so, i read the words with my best french accent (but without the nasal “haw, haw, haw”) and then i heard, from the back row of kids, two little voices saying “tray bow! tray bow!” two of the youngest members of the group had picked up on those two words and were repeating them and it was hilarious! it was like they heard the words and knew they sounded funny (especially with my accent) and wanted to try the words out in their own mouths.

i guess i’m not really all that different. i almost always have some song stuck in my head (right now it’s one from the children’s music cd i was just listening to for storytime) but sometimes i get words or phrases stuck in my head that just repeat over and over. one day, i overheard the word “gay-dar” (as in, “i knew he was gay because he set off my gay-dar”) and that was stuck in my head for about a week. does this happen to anyone else?

i was surprised in high school to learn that not everyone hears music in their head all the time. i was walking home from school with a friend and he was telling me (excitedly) that he had actually heard a song in his head that day “with notes, not just the beat!” it had never occured to me before that some people might just hear rhythms and no music. it made me wonder if he heard music differently than i did. i hear harmonies (oftentimes harmonies that aren’t actually there) and melody and rhythm/beat.

what do you hear in your head?