The American Borrowing (Boink)

Lyrics

A word isn't born, you see. It's made. 
Usually in a place that's damp, and smells of beer. 
Like Liverpool, around 1965. Fog on the Mersey.

Inside the pub, it's all damp wool coats and tobacco smoke.
The sailors are back from somewhere cold. 
They're talking and the word is like a thud. 
A sound for a bump, a knock. 
Something solid hitting something else solid.
Bonk. 
They write it on the bartender's chalkboard for a laugh.
Short, flat, English as fish and chips wrapped in yesterday's news.
It's a working word. It has its sleeves rolled up.

But a word can be a passenger, you know.
It stows away in a sailor's mouth.
Boards the SS United States, bound west.
And the Atlantic does something to a word. 
All that salt and all that time. 
It stretches it out. It adds an echo.

Now it's 1972. A diner in New York City.
It's two in the morning, the air is thick enough to chew. 
The vinyl booth sticks to your skin. 
The word steps off the gangplank, but it's different.
It's taller now. Funnier.
The GIs heard it, and they changed its clothes.
It's not a thud anymore. 
It's the sound a spring makes. Boink.

A word can be a passenger, you know.
It stows away in a sailor's mouth.
Boards the SS United States, bound west.
And the Atlantic does something to a word. 
All that salt and all that time. 
It stretches it out. It adds an echo.

Then the funny pages got a hold of it. 
Some chap named Breathed, drawing a penguin.
He needed a sound for… well, you know. 
Not the Liverpool sound, the bump in the dark. 
He needed the silly sound. The cartoon sound. 
The sound of a jack-in-the-box with an idea. 
And there it was, waiting in a greasy spoon diner. 
Perfect.

So Bonk stayed in England, with the rain. 
And Boink went to America, got its name in the papers. 
One word, two lives. 
Separated by an ocean. 
And a penguin.