Demythologizing an Old Favorite Camp Song

I was working on a piece for my blog and wanted a particular quote by the late Isaac Asimov.  Asimov, admittedly was an atheist, but an uncharacteristically amiable one.  In my opinion he is the greatest science fiction writer ever (I'll put his copious Foundation series and Robot series against anything yet written.  So there.).  He also completed 300 books before he died in 1992.

I've read a lot of Asimov, but somehow I had never come across this charming little, uh, demythologizing of a perennially favorite church camp song (I'm assuming it's still being sung somewhere), called "Tell Me Why." 

My best memory of it was around the evening campfire, snuggled up next to my, well, for lack of a better term, camp girlfriend (I wonder how many of those friendships actually lasted past the bus or van trip home?).  If we were secretly holding hands under a blanket, that was the very best! 

I remember singing that song with such sincerity, certain that my feelings for that cute girl next to me was tuned-in perfectly, being broadcast by my heart to hers (well, not all of them--it was CHURCH camp, after all).

But Isaac, never went to church camp (his family were Jews that emigrated to the United States when he was three years old in 1923.). He taught biochemistry at  Boston University for a number of years as well as being an author. When he became a full-time writer, he moved to Manhattan, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Somewhere along the line Isaac came across the song and decided to explain scientifically the answer to each of the questions in the first verse.  So, here's Asimov's version of "Tell Me Why." Although if he had had the chance to hold hands with a girl around a campfire while singing it, he might have...nah, it's Asimov--He still would have written it. Probably at camp.


So, now you know.  Not that you ever really wondered.  The last line of Asimov's version, writing from the perspective of a man, obviously, captured the reality of holding hands under the blanket.  And that's not so bad. 

I wonder what ever happened to her?

One more thing: Asimov found the solution to another of life's mysteries through music.  You can pronounce the chemical "paradimethlyaminobenzaldehyde" by singing the syllables to the ditty "Turkey in the Straw."  Go ahead.  Try it.  I've been trying to get it out of my head for forty years.