Wimoweh

Since this is the home stretch, I've been hitting the books hard in preparation for the practice certification exam I need to do well on tomorrow, and when I say "hitting the books hard", I mean I'm repeatedly stomping on my study guides with steel-toed boots and letting out murderous howls at four in the morning while the acapella version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" from The Nylons blasts from my computer's speakers.

You think this is my usual hyperbole. But it is not.

That song's been on auto-repeat on iTunes for the past two days because I've recently discovered that for whatever reason, I seem to recognize patterns enormously faster while "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" plays. It's like how baseball players or novelists will eat the exact same thing for breakfast every day when they're on a roll.

But this song, as well as all of the incessant pacing around the room I do while looking at my notes, as well as my frequent crumpling of paper and banking it against the wall so it lands into the waste basket, as well as my singing along to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" in my favorite crazy gibbon voice, has really started to get on my roommate's nerves I think.

Early this morning I heard him talking loudly on the phone, presumably to his girlfriend, presumably venting about his crazy gibbon-voiced singing roommate who sounds more like a mental patient than a studious exam taker. I felt really bad, so bad that I left a note on my cell phone to remind me to stop by Devon Street tonight to pick up a bag of red lentils for him as a token of apology.

But now that I think about it, maybe he's not mad? You ever notice how when you hear foreigners talking to each other, it sounds like they're having a heated argument, when really they could just be talking about the weather?