MONDEGREEN

What’s a mondegreen? Click here.

My humorously misheard song lyric comes from John Cougar W. Amadeus Harvey Mellencamp’s song “Jack and Diane,” specifically from the bridge. I always heard the line “Let the Bible Belt come and save a man’s soul” as “Let the bottle bill come and save a man’s soul.”

You may ask how such a mistake could be made. Remember, I was 10 when “Jack and Diane” came out. I had no idea what Diane was doing in the back seat of Jackie’s car, and I’d never heard of the Bible Belt. But I had heard of the Bottle Bill, Iowa’s beverage-container deposit law which guaranteed me plenty of video game money for hauling other people’s empties back to the store. What this had to do with saving souls is lost on me now, but at the time, there was nothing more spiritual in my life than another game of Zaxxon.