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How Minds Get Boggled

Hearing, by a fetus, apparently starts by the 8th month of pregnancy.
Some scientists surmise that the mother’s voice may have something to do
with a child’s later sense for language; maybe. Other people play Mozart,
loud, hoping that the little tad will prefer it to acid rock, or rap music.

A few entrepreneurs have even wondered if there might be a market
for a “Fetal University”, a device that could be strapped,
something like an electronic bumper, out in front of pregnant women,
reciting the Periodic Table, conversing in French, or playing Schubert.

Joel, the Nokomis Beach Coffee Café customer in charge of Parking
and Random Thought, says he realized when he read about these things
that his mother—who had a house full of kids—ran the vacuum cleaner a lot,
and that explained why he so often found himself snuggling up to the vacuum
in the same way that more normal children snuggled with the dog.

As any normal person would do, I immediately wondered what
Sarah Palin heard when her mother was pregnant, and it is obvious!

Sarah’s mother, up there in Sandpoint, Idaho, had the State's only copy
of "Jabberwocky", by Lewis Carroll. You know how it begins:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."

Sarah's mom recited Jabberwocky, and toted a rifle.
"Hey! Hand me ma rifle! There's a turkey!
'Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'"

It isn't just Sarah who proves this theorem about fetal learning.
Consider George W. His momma never said a sensible word
the whole time she was pregnant with little George Walker,
but she did sing lullabies: "Hush, little Georgie, don't you scream,
Daddy's going to buy you a baseball team!"

A simple glance at Mitch McConnell makes it clear that
the first thing Mitch heard was the sound of bread dough rising,
and I will bet that is the first thing he ever saw, too!

I'm not sure Rush Limbaugh had a mother,
but I will bet his daddy worked in an oil and gas field.

Think about John Boehner! Or old Everett Dirksen,
whose mother must have played the pipe organ.
What was Pat Robertson's mother's favorite hymn?
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!"

And Arnold Schwarzenegger? Born in Austria. Ach! Du Lieber!

It is a theorem that boggles the mind!
Especially if your mother continued to boggle,
even after she learned she was pregnant.

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