It suddenly, 70 years later, floated to the surface of my brain in my morning shower, the most common venue for all my important brain surfacings. It was a song I’d been taught as a kid in Music class. A stirring song. Rousing. Inspiring.

Weird. These were the words:

“Morning comes early and bright with dew/ Under your window I sing to you/ Up then my comrades, up then my comrades/ Over the meadow the sun shines blue.” The song droned on, but mercifully, I forget the rest.

I have a little problem with this ballad, stirring as it very well may have been back when it was written. First of all, why on earth would a music teacher anywhere on this planet want to teach kids to sing that? Unless of course she disliked all children or was hoping it would stick in their minds for life like cold oatmeal chucked against a stone wall.

Was this a war song? Was the composer a benevolent drill sergeant? Was he trilling to his obedient recruits a request that they please arise for a nice 20-mile forced march with full pack across that meadow where the sun was shining blue? And, blue sun? OK, I know the sun looks blue when you squint at it, but everyone knows the sun is golden. And anyone who reads can see that “golden” doesn’t at all rhyme with “dew.” He probably should have written something like “over the meadow a cow goes moo.” Yeah. That’d work. Everyone at least understands a mooing cow, and you don’t have to squint to hear it.

But the “comrades” part has me a little uneasy. Maybe it was originally a Russian song and possibly back then those kindly, euphonious drill sergeants did in fact sing beneath their comrade’s windows. If that’s true, things were surely different then.

Our school song smacked of a little militancy, too. Its lyrics, as far as I can remember were: “Let’s give a roar for the red and the gold/ We’ll cheer our team to victory./ We’ll play the game and our aim is to add to our fame/ Of fighting strength and warriors bold.”

Warriors bold? Fighting strength? Most of us were just relieved to get through Chemistry without blowing the school off the face of the map, or getting through Biology without barfing into our frog dissections. (Will schools ever learn the wisdom of not scheduling dissection classes after lunch period?)

OK, perhaps that song was penned during one of our forever wars, in which case people should sing lustily of bold warriors. But we kids were most assuredly not bold or as yet warriors. Most of us looked at one another, shrugged our shoulders and crossed our eyes, wondering what on earth we were singing about. But as we enthusiastically sang the stanzas of Ye Olde Schoole Songe, we could always count on some of our more elderly teachers or visiting alum to weep a little at our fervor, a couple of them without fail honking really loudly into their initialed, linen handkerchiefs. We loved that part.

We also had to learn the lyrics to “Pomp and Circumstance,” (“Pomp” meaning ceremony, and “Circumstance” meaning situation, leaving me years later still without the least idea why that stirring song was called that.)Some of the words, sort of, I think, were: “Land of ho-ope and glory/Mother of the free / How shall we extol thee? / I can’t remember the next line, but I think it was; “Who are bo-orn of thee?” Whatever, it was surely stirring to anyone within two miles as we passionately belted it out during graduation ceremonies, silently wondering what the “born of thee” part was all about. Oh, wait, now I get it. The “thee” in the fifth line was the “Mother” in the second line. Right? I guess mothers enjoyed being extolled back then.

Graduations, even with stirring songs, can more often than not be forgettable occasions. I’ve been to a bunch of them, a couple of them actually mine, and let’s be truthful — they are frequently so staggeringly boring, you pray for a major glitch. And occasionally, if you’ve been very good, the Glitch God will smile down and grant your fervent entreaty.

A most memorable glitch was the time the tent covering sweltering attendees slowly gave way, sagging to one side and collapsing with a phenomenal sigh like a great, dying elephant on top of the laughing, scrambling people. To a person, they were thrilled and thankful they’d not have to hear the rest of the main speaker’s tedious speech, “Always Remember That Commencement Is Not An Ending, But A Joyous Beginning, A First Step Toward Your Glorious Future. And now, dear parents, friends, relatives and graduates, let me tell you a little something about how my career progressed after I graduated from this beloved institution, fifty seven years ago.” Groan. And groaner.

Or the time a large, friendly dog, a mongrel as I recall, strolled onto the dais while the Magna Cum Whatever was giving a rousing lecture on the need for Peace In Our Time, to Go To The Church of Your Choice Once A week, to Always Vote Republican, and nonchalantly lifted his leg against the Dean of Women’s robe covered knee. Good dog. Stay.

War songs. Graduation songs. Song songs. They’ve always had a place at ceremonies or wherever people gather and they belong there. Graduations without rousing songs is not a real graduation.

And who can forget the inciteful high school songs such as,” Jimmy Crack Corn,” and “The Blue Tailed Fly,” and “Down By The Old Mill Stream?” And of course the immortal “One Billion Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the famous “Found A Peanut,” the lyrical strain shouted energetically by clusters of piercing-voiced adolescents in someone’s father’s station wagon on the way home from a teenage function. This ballad surely belongs to the ages. But sadly it’s the main reason why those station wagon parents suffered burning guilt for the rest of their lives; they can’t shake the shameful memory that while driving those kids home as they screeched that deathless, verse-without-end ballad, every single one of these usually attentive, loving parents gave flickering thought to pulling the car over, getting out on that dark highway and, the kids still yelping those verses, just simply disappearing forever.

LC Van Savage is a Brunswick writer.