An on-line professional development course this summer required us to come up with an embarrassing moment. I've shared this with many of you, but here it is:

Albeit early in life, I have some pretty vivid memories of being three years old in 1969. My father returned from Vietnam, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and the Beatles released Abbey Road. Most of us have a story of an amusing misunderstood lyric or two in our past. Mine here was not so much that I had the words wrong, but rather their context.

“Something” was rising hot on the charts, and I sang along with it every time it came on the radio, with all the right words. They did not, however, mean to me what they meant to George Harrison. At almost four years old, a young boy is not so much impressed with how a woman moves as he is her ability to keep safe distance from danger, which was my main focus at that age. I was learning to look both ways before crossing the street, and to not go running headlong into furniture. The grace of movement would not hit my radar for many years at that point.

“Something in the way? She moves!” Smart lady! Don’t want to leave her now!

Nothing embarrassing about that. Everybody has those stories.

Here’s what is embarrassing: Fast forward to Spring of 1985, and I am a first year student at UNH, sitting at my typewriter, trying to come up with a subject for an English writing assignment. My roommate has a James Taylor cassette playing, and his song “Something in the Way She Moves” comes on, and it is obvious to me that he is singing about the way a woman moves, which is amusing to me because while he uses exactly the same words as the Beatles, they have an entirely different meaning. What a fantastic subject for my English paper! I compared the two uses of that line, and went into a great amount of detail about how a fairly specific array of words can mean two entirely different meanings.

I was so eager to share my brilliant insight with my classmates! After they all had a chance to read it, I found myself having to defend my interpretation of the Beatles’ lyrics to these lesser mortals. These fools seemed to lack the depth to see into the genuine meaning expressed by Harrison. The more they told me that I had it wrong, the more enthusiastically I attempted to enlighten them. Agreeing to disagree, we ended the debate and went on to someone else’s paper.

Walking back to my dorm, I allowed myself to open my heart enough to rethink these lyrics for the first time in sixteen years. Is it possible that the Beatles we were not paying homage to her ability to safely cross the street? At that moment of epiphany, I died a thousand deaths inside, not sure how I would muster the courage to return to that class on Thursday.

Upon returning, before I could say anything, the instructor had found an article, (ten years before anyone ever “Googled” anything, mind you) that asserted that the James Taylor song served as a direct inspiration for Harrison. Before I was able to offer any contrition, the case had been closed. I am pretty sure that for that group of eighteen people, I am entirely defined by that flash of brilliance.