Misheard Lyrics

Here's a misheard lyric that I've been meaning to blog about for awhile now. It comes from the Pearl Jam album Vs., and it's from the song "Rats."

The original lyric is:

they don't eat, don't sleep
they don't feed, they don't seethe
bare their gums when they moan and squeak
lick the dirt off a larger one's feet

But I've always liked to think of it this way:

they don't eat, don't sleep
they don't feed, they don't seethe
bare their gums when they moan and squeak
lick the dirt off Olajuwon's feet

It's not really that I've misunderstood this lyric, but that I kind of prefer the latter over the former. I've always known that it's not "Olajuwon's feet." I mean I'm not dumb. But part of me has always wished that it was "Olajuwon's feet." Maybe my imagination was overdeveloped as a child, but the visual image of that song is so much sweeter when I can imagine a posse of alley rats licking Hakeem Olajuwon's feet, while he stands tall, clutching a basketball in his giant hands and looking sweaty and menacing. It's kind of like Willard meets the NBA.

NOTE:
Apparently I'm not the only one. AmIRight.com shows two misinterpretations of this lyric. The Olajuwon, and this:

Misheard Lyrics:
Lick the dirt off Elijah Wood's feet.

Ehh, I don't know about that one.