One of the more disastrously misheard lyrics we can think of took place yesterday, when 19-year-old Ambridge, Pennsylvania high school student Travis Clawson missed an optometry appointment, causing the office’s receptionist to call him. He didn’t answer, his voicemail message playing instead, in which Clawson rapped the intro lyrics to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Unfortunately, she critically misheard a sequence in the rap — “chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool and all, shooting some b-ball outside of the school” — hearing instead “shooting some people outside of the school.” She promptly called the police, who then called the school district, and as nobody was quite sure where Clawson was, the whole district was put on lockdown. He was eventually found in his high school’s guidance office, and the confusion was explained, though James Mann, the acting police chief, urged Clawson’s parents to make him change the outgoing message. Clawson’s father was unhappy with the entire ordeal: “An innocent young man was embarrassed. How is he supposed to go back to school and face his classmates?” source
