"Say you wake up in a hotel room in Wichita and look out the window. A little girl is walking along the train tracks dragging a big statue of Buddha in a wooden wagon..."

"... with a three-legged dog following behind. Do you reach for your guitar or your drawing pad?"

Bill Flanagan asked Bob Dylan, in 2009.

Dylan answered: "Oh wow. It would depend on a lot of things. The environment mostly; like what kind of day is it. Is it a cloudless blue-gray sky or does it look like rain? A little girl dragging a wagon with a statue in it? I’d probably put that in last. The three-legged dog – what type? A spaniel, a bulldog, a retriever? That would make a difference. I’d have to think about that. Depends what angle I’m seeing it all from. Second floor, third floor, eighth floor. I don’t know. Maybe I’d want to go down there. The train tracks too. I’d have to find a way to connect it all up. I guess I would be thinking about if this was an omen or a harbinger of something."

The reason I'm reading that this morning is I just searched bobdylan.com to see if Bob had ever used the word "wow." And that interview was the only thing. You know, "wow" is a pretty interesting word. It's one of those sounds people made, in amazement or surprise, that caught on and came to be regarded as words, things like "oh" and "ooh" and "ah."

"Wow" got started in Scotland. Robert Burns wrote:

If in your bounds ye chance to light

Upon a fine, fat fodgel wight,
O’ stature short, but genius bright,
That’s he, mark weel;
And wow! he has an unco sleight
O’ cauk and keel.

He's saying "wow" about a man's use of drawing materials: "cauk and keel" means white chalk and red chalk. That's interesting because not only did Bob Dylan say "wow" in the context of drawing, Robert Burns was his greatest influence... or so he said when asked, in 2009, to cite one particular lyric. It wasn't that bit about "cauk and keel" though. It was:

O my Luve is like a red, red rose 

   That’s newly sprung in June; 

O my Luve is like the melody 

   That’s sweetly played in tune.

But what was with this interest in "wow" all of sudden?, you might wonder. It all started with Meade asking me how to spell "wowie." Or is it "wowee"? He was writing something. There's a story behind that, but the "wowie" story for me this morning begins with his question. 

I saw that the OED had an entry with the spelling "wowee" It traced it to 1963, to a Mad Magazine line that has a different spelling: "Boy! Wow-wee! That’s quite an exciting evening line-up!" I had a pop culture references that supported my spelling: "Wowie Zowie" — the Mothers of Invention song from the "Freak Out" album.

But then there's this from  Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Free No. 10":

Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told

The streets in heaven are lined with gold
I ask you how things could get much worse
If the Russians happen to get up there first
Wowee! pretty scary!

That supports Meade's spelling, and I like that better and not just because it's Bob's. Note that Bob also writes, in that same song:

Now they asked me to read a poem
At the sorority sisters’ home
I got knocked down and my head was swimmin’
I wound up with the Dean of Women
Yippee! I’m a poet, and I know it
Hope I don’t blow it

It's "yippee" not "yippie." "Yippie" is correct for that variation on "hippie," but that's not the exclamation. The exclamation has got to be "yippee." The "-ee" ending feels like a glorious shout. The "-ie" ending is a diminutive. For example, to get back to Burns:

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,

O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

Thou need na start awa sae hasty,

          Wi’ bickerin brattle!

I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee

          Wi’ murd’ring pattle!