Written May 2001.   Has anyone ever put on different costumes to try and fool you?  I thought so.  Well, this song is about that.  It also opens "Permanent Markers".

A man enters with a fake handlebar moustache and a camel hair coat and as half his 'stache unglues and falls slowly he admits it's a faux. He says this disguise should remind of me a road I once wrote on: a road that could've gone on and on, a road I couldn't break a run on, so instead I'd walk real slow. He says I walked like a china cup in a bull shop--on the brink of being broke, trying to break a bull code, walked as if already broken.

I said: You must've slipped my mind.
You won't ring a bell this time..
You must've slipped my mind.

A man re-enters with a bottle in his hand and knee-deep in snow boots .  He says these props should ring a bell of when me and the snow fell (I tripped)-- (the bottle began to drip). Held up that bottle as proof. He says I thought I fucked things up when I sipped flat Pepsi from a Dixie Cup and I should've known I was doing fine but a Dixie cup needs red wine.

I said: You must've slipped my mind.
You ain't gonna ring a bell this time.
You must've slipped my mind.

No one's a shoe-in in this memory.
No one's a shoe-in in my memory.

A man re-re-enters with two rubber hands and says these should do the
trick--to re-touch my mind, re-bang my brain, make my memory re-tick.

I say: But the past is mine to pick.
The past is mine to pick.

You must've slipped my mind.
You ain't gonna ring a bell this time.
You must've slipped my--you're gonna slip my--you have slipped my mind.