Catapult

If the song isn’t referencing child abuse then what on earth does the “howl of the rope” mean then? If this is referencing a bomb shelter then there would not have likely been such a sound? Am I correct?

The song is clearly about Stipe and his sister being frightened for their lives at the hands of their abusive father.

“It’s nine o’clock don’t try to turn it off’ ….. likely referring to the TV that he and his sister were watching downstairs in the basement, which may have been the sound of their saving grace at the time. As long as their father could hear the sound of the TV downstairs he would likely have delayed going down to beat the crap out of the two of them with whatever God-Forsaken sadistic ROPE-DERIVED inhuman pain-inflicting device that the father may have been using at the time.

As a result of my own interpretation I often feel guilty for liking this song.

The song reminds me of one by Skillet, called ‘Open Wounds’. Check it out if you’ve never heard it.

[Edit: Desired to Edit]

If I had to guess, I'd say this song most likely is not about kids worrying about getting a spanking but rather about the fear of a possible nuclear war. "Ooh, we were little boys/girls," "cowered in a hole" and the refrain of "Did we miss anything?" could all refer to the civil defense air raid drills that children and families of the 1950s did, and "catapult" could be meant to link the medieval version of 'death from above' with the modern version. "We in step in hand" could be about how children learned in school to line up in an orderly way for fire drills or other emergencies, and "your mother remembers this" could also refer either to that or to similar drills during World War 2 a generation before. "Hear the howl of the rope" could refer to the sound of the mechanism of a catapult as it's drawn back or released, and perhaps thus to the sound of missiles overhead in the modern version.

In this context, "Did we miss anything?" could have a double meaning: the worried parents in the bomb shelter wondering if they remembered all their precautions, but also the more existential question of "Was there anything we could have done to prevent this impending apocalypse from coming to pass?" From the perspective of a late baby boomer or early Gen-Xer facing a bewildering world in the early '80s, when this song was written, putting those uneasy feelings about the unknown and uncontrollable into a song doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility.

Not sure what "It's 9 o'clock, don't try to turn it off" might refer to: perhaps a radio, a light switch, a TV broadcast. Perhaps none of the above. As for the other stuff, I'm not claiming to know any of it definitively; it's just the best I could do to make sense of a somewhat murky, "murmur"ing song that really got my attention way back when it was released. I still remember where I was when I heard it the first time, and how new it sounded, especially compared to the crap that was almost ubiquitous on radio at the time.

Correction.

The song references slingshots ("hand catapults") and TV. There's no "darker March." It goes

BUSH Could be target BARN Could be target

Catapult . . .

Because the image is boys shooting at stuff with slingshots.

Michael, please explain

A catapult launches something recklessly and destructively forward.

This song is about kids watching television. Wiser parents would turn it off, but these kids beg for their parent to let them keep watching. Exposed to adult ideas that they shouldn't have seen at an early age, they are catapulted into confronting the harsher aspects of life before they are ready for that.

I love this song. I never really pretended to understand what it was about, it just was a cool song off the album. I actually liked it better than "radio Free Europe".

the acoustic guitar hook in the chorus is so great

I think this song is about him watching and being obsessed with TV shows as a kid--specifically the Andy Griffith Show (hence the Opie reference). The kids are being punished for staying up late to watch TV but do it anyway.

I think he's saying "open your mouth," not "opie mouth" - makes much more sense.

These lyrics are close but even though they are all over the internet they are not quite accurate. (Not that anyone can really what they were saying clearly in the early albums.
I am not sure it's Opie either. I think he says 'Cowered in our hole...Hungry or Henry mouthed a question' and the second sentence in the bridge I am pretty sure is 'March could get darker'.

I think the meaning of this song is a little dark. It's about kids getting punished for some reason and hiding from their parents because the beatings are coming. Hear the howl of the rope as it hits your fanny. They can't understand why they were getting beaten which is why they are asking if they missed anything. The beatings could get worse in March. Did I miss anything? Did I I miss anything?