It was absolutely beautiful weather on Wednesday morning for the General Services Administration's Combined Federal Campaign Kickoff. Every year the friendly folks at the GSA raise an enormous amount of money to benefit charitable work in Kansas City and around the nation. I was honored to be the emcee of the event...that would probably qualify as the low-light. The highlight was the Singing Bee! Most of you probably know, a Singing Bee is where they play a section of a song up to a particular point, then stop everything, requiring the contestant to correctly sing the next line. I guess there are a couple of TV shows like this on the air, but, considering my prime-time viewing habits still involve The Rockford Files, The Andy Griffith Show and, my most up-to-date show, Seinfeld, I've not seen these new-fangled programs.

When I think of a musical game show, I think of Name That Tune! I loved that program when I was younger. To this day, I will occasionally say "I can name that tune in three notes!" for no apparent reason. Sure, I get some weird looks, especially in the produce aisle of Price Chopper, but I say it anyway. On family road trips, back in the days before in-car videos, hand-held games and lap-top computers when moms, dads, brothers and sisters were forced to converse, we'd play a version of Name That Tune using TV theme songs. Proving my children have watched far too much tube over the years, they almost always got the melody in about a note and a half.

Most of us sort of play the Singing Bee on a daily basis. We get a song in our head and then try to remember the words. Often, we aren't quite right. For example, a kid in my neighborhood thought the words to I Can See Clearly Now were "I can see all the icicles in my way" rather than "I can see all the obstacles in my way." But, we were in Wisconsin, so either word was applicable. When it comes to mangled lyrics, one memory shines very bright. It was a warm, summer Saturday. My mom and I were sitting in the car on Water Street, downtown, waiting for my dad to get out of the drug store. The radio was tuned to a station that was doing a live remote from Crazy TV Lenny's American TV store. Just as the DJ was about to introduce the next record, another voice started to come out of the speaker: "Hey, let me sing my favorite song...hey, let me sing..." The DJ, being a good sport, let this would-be warbler step up to the microphone and she was off. She had good taste in music. Her favorite song was Put Your Hand In The Hand, the big 1971 hit. Now, this singer had a great deal of energy and enthusiasm. Her pitch and intonation were a little shaky. Still, she persevered...and was doing okay until the last line. Instead of "Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee," which is a pretty vital bit of musical information given the song's subject matter, this rendition ended with "Put your hand in the hand of the man from the GALAXY."

Now, I guess the word could still be appropriate, spiritually speaking, or, just maybe, the woman singing had a slightly different belief system than most of us in our little country village. But, most likely, she had just been hearing and singing the song wrong through the years. When ET came out in theaters, I thought about that woman singing and how excited she must have been. Her mis-sung lyric did not take anything away from her excitement for and emotion about the song. It just threw a totally different take on the tune for those of us listening. To this day, just reminding my mom about it will lead to laughter.

The moral of this story? The lesson learned at Wednesday morning's GSA party? With a song in your heart, what comes out of your mouth isn't so important.