1,2,3: Britney, Lawyer Boy, and Me

I have begun the new year with a startling realization: Britney Spears is following me. If I knew what I had done to merit this fantastic honor, trust me, I'd share. Perhaps she's drawn to my stellar cookie-baking abilities. Or perhaps it's my alluring natural musk that's got her hooked.

My money's on the musk. I am pretty damn irresistibly musky, if I do say so myself.

Whatever the bait, Britney is waiting for Lawyer Boy and I every single time we get in the car together. She's lurking on the local pop/trash station, Q94, ready to wail her latest chart-raper, "Three," from the select speakers that still work in my ten-year-old Jeep. This has happened so many times and with such unfailing consistency that even LB has noticed it, and he's normally pretty hell-bent on ignoring whatever Auto-Tuned tart I've chosen to aurally assault us that day.

Since I've been hearing this song all the time, I started paying attention to the lyrics, and I was half shocked off my rocker, and half not even remotely surprised, to discover that the song is about threesomes. No, Mom, not a golf threesome. A three-people sex-fiesta* threesome. I wanted to be surprised, but then I remembered that Britney willingly and repeatedly had sex with Kevin "C Is For Condoms, And Condoms Aren't For Me" Federline, so absolutely nothing is off the table. I accepted the fact that American radio stations were habitually playing a song about group sex, and naturally, I immediately tried to learn all the words.

And those words are a funny thing. I am notoriously awful at deciphering song lyrics, to the point that listening to me sing, you'd wonder if English was my second language (and also, how to make me stop singing). My most epic failure, and one for which I am still mercilessly mocked, is TLC's "Waterfalls," which contains the refrain: Don't go chasin' waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to.

When I was at summer camp when I was twelve, this song was really popular, and a friend of mine who I shan't name, but whose name contains the letters Anne, told everyone in our cabin that I consummately believed the lyrics to be don't go, Jason Waterfalls, etc. What? Why could the guy she loved NOT be named Jason Waterfalls? I still fail to see the problem with this interpretation.

In fifteen years my skills haven't advanced much, and the reason is simple: I believe that singers and songwriters must, by their very nature, be crazier than I am.

Stop laughing at me.

When I hear song lyrics that don't make any sense as I understand them, I just assume that the lyrics don't make sense because the writer was either high or insane when she wrote them, and I have to just accept them for what they are. Seriously, would you try to argue with me that Britney Spears isn't high most of the time? Or that she is just naturally rational and reasonable? Thank you.

So after I'd heard "Three" a few times, I thought I had the lyrics down. The words I was rocking out to went something like this:

1, 2, 3, I don’t mean you and me,
Got one lady agreed,
And I’m caught in between.

Count 'em 1, 2, 3,
Need an automatic three,
Getting down with three-peat
Everybody loves UUUHHHH.

Okay, so maybe they're not the most reasonable lyrics in the world. But again, we're talking about Britney, who again, had sex with Kevin Federline repeatedly. And on purpose.

As it turns out, the lyrics are more along the lines of:

1, 2, 3
Not only you and me
Got one eighty degrees
And I'm caught in between
Countin'
1, 2, 3
Peter, Paul & Mary
Gettin' down with 3P
Everybody loves ***
Countin'

"Got one eighty degrees"? I don't even know what that means! To be fair, I also don't know what an "automatic three" or a "three-peat" are, but this is her song, not mine! It's her job to make sense, not mine!

As always, it is apparently not ever my job to make sense. However, it is also apparent that despite this shortcoming, Britney really wants to serenade LB and I until she convinces us to be part of her personal three-peat.

Confidential to Britney: We live in Richmond.

Confidential to LB: Both HELLZ and NO.

*I would like to go on the record as being the first person to ever use the term "sex-fiesta," and as such, I will allow you to make up your own definition for it. Make it good, because seriously? Sex-fiesta?!!??