Blinded By the Light, Wrapped Up Like A WHAT?

bloop-er (bloo-per)
-noun
1. Informal. An embarrassing mistake, as one spoken over the radio or TV.

Well, it’s that time of year. Next week Girls on the Run is hosting its annual summit. Over 200 of the fabulous women and men engaged in our program will descend upon Austin, TX to network, learn and bond. I'm thrilled that Kristin Armstrong, Coach Jenny Hadfield and all of our fabulous sponsors...New Balance, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, Secret Deodorant (Proctor and Gamble), Goody's Hair Accessories, Horizon Fitness and a BRAND NEW fabulous partner (more to come on that next week)will be there to celebrate, learn and network with us.

I’m finalizing my remarks today from home and am reaching out for last minute input from those of you who read this blog.

As we’ve done in past years, we reserve the Tuesday night dinner for a celebration of our girls, our coach of the year and ourselves! Typically there is a lot of joy, gratitude and LAUGHTER (pho sho!)

This year I’m going to be highlighting some fabulous bloopers…both within and “without” our Girls on the Run network. Remember this video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfVBJJRZ7dw



(Please ignore viewer comments beneath the video.)

I recall my 3rd grade friend Nina who went on and on for several minutes about the dangers of Tabasco…only to learn a few minutes later that what she actually meant was tobacco.

How could we forget Ramona the Pest? That rambunctious little 8 year old Beverly Cleary protagonist who in her first book was distraught for her friend who was told by their teacher “to sit here for the present”…who DID sit there for a quite a long time and he never received the present.

Or my other little friend Claire who shared with me her “Psssst secret” that she was very concerned about her grandma Eva. I asked why and she shared with me that “in the Lord’s Prayer…you know the one you have to learn for confirmation and that we say in church every Sunday, they talk about “deliver us from Eva.” She was concerned over God’s apparent dislike of Eva and HIS urging us to be apart from her.

Or my own daughter Helen (when she was just six years old), shared on our ride from school, after a long and apparently detailed in-class discussion on Martin Luther King and his amazing legacy, that in no uncertain terms and completely out of the blue that she” would probably marry a black man one day” and who in the same week informed me that her two female white mice were lesbians…because one of them was pregnant. (What she hadn’t pieced together was the fact that her mouse was already pregnant when we purchased her.)

What about the infinite number of misinterpretation of the words in a song. INXS had a song entitled “Suicide Blonde.” My best friend Lisa was in the car with me singing to it and replaced “Suicide Blonde” with “Soup and Salad Bar.” And of course, there’s always one of the funniest…“Blinded by the Light” by Manfred Mann. The words somewhere in that song are “wrapped up like a something that I never understood. Need I say more? To this day, I still don’t know what that word really is.

I mean, let’s face it. Even the idea of a blooper provides for remarkably funny entertainment. Who could forget this one?



So..come on now…send ‘em to me (TODAY or this week!!!!). Lay it on me! Shout it at me! Throw it to me! Send along your funniest word, sentence or idea bloopers…either those you have heard yourself or those you have heard about…from your girls, coaches, kids, family members, colleagues and/or acquaintances.

Send them to me at molly@girlsontherun.org. And okay…one final one…here goes…one of my favorites…