Who, Indeed?

Mon cher degreen

• The Who
• Who do you love
• Whose your daddy
• Who knows where the time goes

Here are some other more well-known songs and catch phrases that include the word "Who":

Songs:

1. "Who Are You" by The Who
2. "Who's That Girl" by Madonna
3. "Guess Who's Back" by Eminem
4. "Who Let the Dogs Out" by Baha Men
5. "Who Do You Think You Are" by Spice Girls
6. "Who Will Save Your Soul" by Jewel
7. "Who Can It Be Now?" by Men at Work
8. "Who Says" by Selena Gomez & the Scene
9. "Who Knew" by P!nk

Catchphrases:

1. "Guess who?" – A common phrase used when surprising someone or when the person's identity is supposed to be guessed.
2. "Who's asking?" – A response to a question where the person wants to know the identity of the inquirer.
3. "Who's counting?" – Typically used to indicate that the precise number of something is not important.
4. "Who's to say?" – A phrase suggesting that it's not clear who has the authority to give a definitive answer on a matter.
5. "Doctor Who?" – Catchphrase from the British TV series "Doctor Who," often used when introducing the character or the show itself.
6. Who was that masked man? — said of Kemo Sabe.
7. Who are these guys? — Sundance Kid

$whoami

This is the most important form of who in the computer systems that run the Internet. It's an ancient computer command to tell you the identity under which you are logged it. That identity controls what you can see, where and what you can write and what programs you can run.

Do you know who I am?

An angry passenger has been bumped from a flight. He's your typical wannabe A-lister still trying to dine out on his fading 15 minutes of fame. He strides up to the check-in counter, shouldering aside other passengers standing quietly in line. He draws himself up to what used to be his full height before he had to start wearing lifts and the forces of gravity acting on his spare tire began to compress his spine. He throws out his chest, scrunches up his face, pops the sternocleidomastoid muscles of the neck bellows the question that you should never ask.

The gate agent has seen this act and is not impressed. She politely nods and in a continuous gesture takes the microphone to her face and announces

Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? This gentleman has forgotten who he is. Will anyone who recognizes him kindly come to the counter? If you can identify him United Airlines will be pleased to reward you with a pass to the United Club lounge for the rest or your itinerary for a future trip. Thank you for your help.

And then

Please, sir, if you will wait over there, I will call you back if anyone recognizes you to help reclaim your identity.

And so?

An identity is a more than a name. It is who a person will be taken for, how listened to, how heeded, how deferred to, how yielded to, how catered to, how tolerated. How placed in the pecking order.

Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken?

Our immortal souls, imperishable, unchanging, essential. Right?

Not really. Once we convince ourselves that we have located ours, we gently wrap it in memory and nourish it. By that time, of course, it has been in training under coach family for some years and under the teams you join. Especially your team mates. We push, we pull, we get pushed back, we are kissed back, we are slapped. We are molded.

Belly gazing

We take it out for a closer look, fondle it and and tuck in back in its swaddling clothes. In the process, we are raising up a baby to a toddler, through childhood, adulthoood, their own career, possibly parenthood, into middle age, retirement, senility and death. Every time, the soul responds to the attention and tries to please. It tries by changing in ways it hopes to win our approval.

Like any idea, the very act of retrieving it from memory and perceiving it in the light of our cumulative lives to date and what we had for breakfast and then thinking about it changes it. And so does everything else in our lives, one way or another.

Every so often in life our social environment changes rapidly. We may go to a new school and be the new kid. Most of the other kids have been in the same class year for some time, perhaps even from kindergarden. They are sorted. There are only a few gaps to slot into, so we try to fit and hope we can hide inconspicuously or we mount an assault and get slapped down or the stars align and we acquire a marketable brand.

After school, we molt and find ourselves in a new barnyard among a cohort who have little or no history together. If the new barnyard is one of the smaller, residential colleges the college experience opens up what can be our most intense transformations until the mid- and late-life crises come along. One of the opportunities that open for a few months is being to try out different persons and audition for different identities. Some take bettter than others, and some fall flat. We trim sales, we lighten ballast and sail closer to the wind or lay away. As we sail we keep trying to learn to keep the sails from luffing like laundry on the line flapping in a gale. How well we learn, how well we internalize navigating in our social and our total environments, and how quickly, determines our sense of self. We reach some equilibrium or don't and keep flailing?

Mondegreen?

I have a relation who had a career singing on a road band. One of the songs in the set was John Fogarty's classic

I see the bad moon risin'
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today
Don't go around tonight
Well, it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise

but she heard There's a bathroom on the right

When I was between potty training and learning to read, when the holidays came with

Silent night, holy night

All is calm. All is bright.

Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child

Holy Infant so tender and mild

I heard

Ground round version, so tender and mild

or, at least now that's what I think I heard, and it's only the memories of what have than what actually might have been recorded st the time. It's my memory and I'm keeping it. Until next time.