Tag: You Can’t Do That on Television

Earworms are common in life. They happen – a song pops up at random or a snippet of something musical that you’ve heard, be it a professional song, a TV theme, a commercial, or something else. It happens.

I’ve been haunted in the past by a piano riff to a song I didn’t know the name to that I had heard off the radio as a child. A friend helped me find out what pop song it was. I now listen to the tune on a semi-regular basis.

I’ve got another song in my head and there are issues that likely make it impossible for me to ever hear it again; another volley from childhood in the 1980s. This time, though, I saw the song performed on television and I know the refrain from it… It’s just most every other factor is forgotten and web searches turn up nothing.

It was on Nickelodeon, I’m pretty certain of that. It wasn’t Pinwheel, or Out of Control (to even suggest that one is comical, which goes well with Out of Control’s comedic motifs), and it sure as shit wasn’t something from You Can’t Do That on Television. I just don’t remember the show besides being acting and musical – and I don’t mean skit musical but performing on-stage for children in an audience.

And while memory is dim on any other details, the acoustic song’s refrain isn’t forgotten:

Swimming in the pool and lying in the sun,
Swimming in the pool and lying in the sun

In fact, it comes off like a coda to end the song from my memory. It didn’t go on for 4 or 5 minutes but it was repeated over and over again until the last line: Swimming in the pool… And lying in the sun!

I can’t remember other verses, but the song was about summer time. I can remember the tempo. Everything else is a wash – who was performing it (guys), what show, all the lyrics. I’ve tried looking the song up quoting the refrain but results were minimal on Google and seeing some were linked to adult related content, I don’t think the wording is right on my part or the song is actually listed lyrically online.

It’s not like songs off Nick escape me entirely. I can’t forget Hocus Pocus from Today’s Special. The theme to Pinwheel is still in my head. Heck, maybe I have the wrong station where I heard this thing? It could have been CBS but the only live-action, children’s TV show that I remember watching was the Patchwork Family (I don’t know if that was a New York only broadcast, by the way; it was a Saturday morning show).

Back to the song in question, it’s catchy to the point you’d expect someone to cover it. Then again, it’s a kid’s song. It’s not going to get covered as so much remembered. In this case, it is indeed remembered – just without solid facts of who, what, where and when.