Satellite

Years ago, I was camping with a few friends. We sat on the top of a little mountain, layered in coats, looking up at the sky, and we saw a satellite.

Someone pointed it out. We watched it, and then someone said sat-e-llite. And the group began to sing Satellite by Dave Matthews. Or we tried to sing it, but as is required when attempting to mimic Dave Matthews, everyone turned into a muppet. Soon all we were was a group of adults squawking sat-e-llite in weird voices. We found this unreasonably funny, despite not being overly inebriated.

And for years after that, the joke persisted. Even after we had all moved to other spots, someone would send a GIF of a satellite in the group chat. Once a Lego satellite set was given as a Christmas gift. Any time we were in person, someone would sneak in the overly drawn out word of sat-e-llite into the conversation, and there we'd go again.

It became a latent voice trigger. Someone said it and everyone riffed on it. It didn't matter what the conversation was about. The word sat-e-llite made an appearance and cue a rabbit hole of funny voices and a total derailment of whatever we were trying to talk about.

Then, years later, I was at a lunch meeting with a totally different group of people. These were work peers and my boss, most of whom I didn't know all that well personally. We were talking about something, and someone said satellite and, before I could stop myself, I said, sat-e-llite.

AND EVERYONE BEGAN TO DO IT. IN THE MUPPET VOICE.

Even my boss, who was listening to a meeting on a headset, did it. He stated that it was impossible to sing Dave Matthews without sounding like Kermit the Frog.

And we sat there, for an overly long time, none of us inebriated at all, and croaked sat-e-llite at each other.

And I wondered if I had stumbled upon some universal brain truth that Dave Matthews had unleashed on the world. What it means and why we do it, I can't answer. But you should try it in your own world. Can you get a random group of Millennials and Gen-Xers to say sat-e-llite over and over again, simply by saying it once?

Inquiring minds want to know.