“Shake the hand of a brand new fool.”

Over and over. Those eight words kept rumbling in my brain last night. Over and over. Every time I thought I could fall asleep … those eight words pulled me out of Slumberland Highway and parked me on a park bench.

Background.

Earlier in the day, while listening to one of my streaming audio channels to pass time, I heard the tail end of a song with that lyric. Okay. That happens. You hear a song, you don’t automatically recognize it. Then eventually you hear the DJ mention its title or the artist performing it … and you move on with your life.

Except – this time the DJ didn’t mention the song or identify the artist. Now at the time, my attention was on other things, so whatever was playing in the background would move to the next song and I’d probably sing along or hum along with that track.

But last night … for some reason … that fragment of a lyric kept rattling around in my brain like a squatter fighting eviction.

So this morning … I took that lyric and looked it up on Google.

And this came up.

Well … that’s the song … but it’s too up-tempo from what I remember. Not that I don’t totally enjoy the Drifters version, it’s quite bouncy …

Well, I’ve already put one leg in the rabbit hole … let’s keep going. Is there another version of this song that will match up with what I heard? Maybe it’s this one.

Um … no. This one’s faster, and the mystery lyric Elvis sings is actually “Take a look at a brand new fool.” Not the same thing.

All right, keep digging, Chuck, it’s there someplace.

Maybe it’s this guy …

Yeah, the tempo matches up with what I remember … and so does the lyric. I guess until I hear it again, this will have to do.

But see … this kept me up all night. That one lyric. The whole concept of someone falling in love and failing miserably, and then just reluctantly acknowledging his failure with others who have loved and lost. I have to tell you … those songwriters Lieber and Stoller had pretty deep concepts in their creations.

I should have just looked this up last night. Or maybe four hours ago. But I hoped that at the time, I would simply drift into a restful sleep and that lyric would simply start a long, meandering dream.

Yeah, that might work. Then again, I might end up with a situation where I generate a fragment of lyric from my dream and then try to match a song in real life with it. That happened five years ago, and yes, I blogged about it.

In other words, that song “Fools Fall in Love” was, for me, an earworm that would not leave my brain. And it kept me awake all night, torturing my sleep like an alley cat yowling on the fence.

I mean … maybe I should have had this song stuck in my noggin all night instead. Don’t you think?

Handshakes for fools all around, I guess … 😦