Tuesday, February 14, 2017

what's a "treetop lover"?

I've been on a "Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown" jag. It started when my daily Adrian Zmed meme referenced Chicago. If you found this post from my FaceBook page, you may know what I'm referring to. If not, then you may be confused. Too bad. Anyway, I posted the Zmed meme, and a Facebook friend commented with a reference to the South side of Chicago, which put me in full-fledged nostalgia for Jim Croce's classic.

The next two Zmed memes were references to the song. I've had the song as an earwig, and I've been singing it over and over. And on someone else's FB account I responded to a post with a bad joke about the song. But, of course, someone who doesn't know me saw my comment. He didn't know I was making a joke, and concluded (reasonably, I admit) that I was saying that "Bad Bad Leroy Brown" was a song by the band, Chicago. Arrrgghhhh!

But all that's beside the point.

A couple of people have asked me about the line, "All the downtown ladies call him 'Treetop Lover.'" What, exactly, does that mean? And I can't answer because I have no clue. All I could think of is that he's always climbing out of bedroom windows and into the treetops because his lovers' husbands have unexpectedly come home during the day. But that doesn't sound quite right.

I looked on Google, and found some references to the term, but nothing that really makes sense in context. Urban Dictionary has the following for "Treetop"

The guy that everyone either wants to be, wants to be like, or wants to be with. The guy so cool he decides what's going to be cool next.
But I don't think that's what Croce meant. Over at Topix, there was a heated discussion (part of which is reproduced here. Someone with the username "Christmas Hunter" eventually wrote "It's a guy that thinks he is the world's #1 lover. Get with it people." That's probably the best explanation I'll see, but it still leaves me wondering how the term came about.

Anyone?



7 comments:

  1. It's a hyperbolic reference to his height, which was mentioned in the prior line. Treetop lover. So tall that he has relations with the tops of trees. Hard to believe that so many people would have difficulty interpreting this.

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  3. I believe that it is someone who steps over their other to get up the ladder, or family tree of genetic or financial success at the expense of their relationship because they crave the destination more than the journey of real branching love, and they are on the tree for themselves.

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  4. The first thing that occurred to me was that is was a sexual reference. They're using the cowgirl position and he calls his "organ" a tree. But I admit that's probably way off.

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  5. He's the Tarzan of the Jungle ... takes his Jane to the treetops

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  6. I think your first instinct is actually the correct one. He's a man who beds other men's wives and therefore is often climbing out of bedroom windows into the treetops.

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