Puppy Romance

A and I carpool to and from work. This works out well because we work about 7 blocks from each other, work pays for parking and best of all, it gives us almost 2 more hours together a day. (DC traffic is all they promise it to be - we only live 8 miles from work but it takes about an hour door to door.)

Extra time we have together is also extra time to listen to the radio. We have a lousy stereo thanks to A's bad luck suffering two break ins while in business school. We have been saying for two years we'll get a new car, so we've never bothered to upgrade the stereo to anything other than a radio and tape deck.

The mornings are pretty basic. We mainly listen to Mike and Mike on ESPNRadio. It makes both of us happy - they talk about sports intelligently but without being juvenile, chauvinistic or generally annoying. (During the football season, Mondays mean the Joe Theismann show and Fridays were Vinnie Cerrato, who knows now.) During commercials we'll flip over to NPR to catch some news.

The afternoons pose more of a problem. A works and parks the car north of my office, so he gets the car first and drives the 6 blocks south to pick me up. This means he gets to choose the radio station. Nine times out of ten this means he is listening to LaVar and Dukes**. This is a local sports radio show that is like every skit SNL has written about sports radio. It's awful. There is another sports show A flips to sometimes, but I hate it even more than I hate LaVar's show. In a compromise, we have started to listen to more Top 40 radio. Yes, we know it's not great music, but a little Miley Cyrus is what you need at the end of a long day.

**I did not know this is what LaVar and Dukes looked like until now. It certainly explains a few things.

Top 40 radio stations being what they are (HOT 99.5 in our case) we hear the same 7 songs every day. After a while the lyrics grow on you and that is when our commuting favorite game was born - rewriting the lyrics of Top 40 songs involving our dog, Calhoun. Some re-writes are basic - from "Dam, you a sexy bitch" to "Cal's a good lookin' puppy". (I didn't say our top 40 song choices were high brow.) Challenged after changing this one lyric, A took it upon himself to showcase his talents, and thus Puppy Romance was born, loosely based on Lady Gaga's Bad Romance.

We've never written down the lyrics, so its never the same (though the game is played EVERY DAY because we hear Bad Romance at least once a commute) but there are some general themes. Sometimes it's "caught in a puppy romance," other times it's "caught in a Calhoun romance." Often it involves a description of his brown eyes and floppy ears, sometimes Bailey makes a cameo.

I've included some of our favorite lyrics for you, so next time you are sitting in your 45th min of traffic and Bad Romance comes on the radio you too can sing along with Puppy Romance. (And yes, we know that all of the lyrics don't make sense, but have you ever really listened to Bad Romance's lyrics??)

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oooh-oh-oh-oh-oooh-oh-oh-oh!

Caught in a puppy romance

Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah-ah!Roma-roma-mamaa!

Ga-ga-ooh-la-la!

Want your chewies!

Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah-ah!Roma-roma-mamaa!

Ga-ga-ooh-la-la!

I want your chewies

I want your cruncies I want your squeakies I want your everything As long as it's kitty

I want your love(Love-love-love I want your chewies)

I want your love and I want your chewies You and me could write a Cal romance

(Oh-oh-oh--oh-oooh!)

I want your love and All your kitty crunchies You and me could write a Cal romance

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oooh-oh-oh-oh-oooh-oh-oh-oh! A puppy romance

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oooh-oh-oh-oh-oooh-oh-oh-oh! Caught in a puppy romance

I have brown eyes and I have floppy ears

You and me could write a Cal romance

(Oh-oh-oh-oh-oooh!)

I have brown eyes and I have floppy ears

Caught in a puppy romance

(A also instructs me to tell you that the French part is to be sung making up french words and using the words "Cal" and "puppy" in a French accent)