Why couldn't the singer remember eating Timothy in the song Timothy?

Answer 1

It is the song "Timothy" that tells of three miners being trapped by a cave in, and only two are rescued at the end. The miners are hungry, but the two who get out alive are full when recovered. The fate of the third miner (Timothy) is never specified. There is just a suggestion written into the lyrics by Rupert Holmes, who penned the tune.

Holmes wrote this song to "suggest" that the two others (Joe and me -- it's told in the first person) ate Timothy, but it was doubtless too gruesome to actually write that into a song. Instead, it was only hinted at in the lyrics that Timothy was a victim of cannibalism. It was a gimmick of the writer to avoid directly state Timothy's fate. ("When they broke through to pull us free, the only ones left was Joe and me.") In the chorus, we see "Timothy, Timothy, where on earth did you go?" The aware listener is hooked into making up his own mind as to what actually went on.