And then it hit me. In my haste to show how quickly I could learn the song, I hadn’t really stopped to consider what the song was about, which was someone joyously playing the bass fiddle. I mean, I sort of knew that, but in my nervousness, I didn’t pronounce “bass” like the instrument—like “face,” “place,” or even “ace,” a word that was actually in the song. I pronounced it like “pass,” “grass,” or “ass”—which was also what I now felt like.
