Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Innocent Children's Songs

Once you become a parent and your child reaches 2 or 3 years old, say goodbye to listening to your personal preference in music. :-)
In the car, we have an entire CD case of selections for our listening pleasure(?), all consisting of kids' songs. Raffi, Wiggleworms, Philadelphia Chickens, Ralph's World, Dr. Seuss recordings, .... They are not too bad at first, but since they are relatively short songs, you quickly find yourself listening to the same songs for the second and third times.
Some of the songs are original and are actually entertaining. And then there are the albums of all the songs you have known forever like "Mary Had a Little Lamb", etc. In fact, we have one just titled Childrens' Favorites Sing-A-Long. It contains the basic fare of songs like "She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain," "This Old Man Played Knick-Knack," "London Bridges", and others. Seems like a very innocent CD, sung by a children's choir in very impressive harmony and with good enunciation. The words, for a group, are very clear. And this is one where they've really researched and have multiple verses to songs that most of us have only ever heard one verse.
So it all seems innocuous enough until we get into "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." The words to the second verse are as follows:
Rip, Rip, Rip your pants,
Gently down the seams,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Hear the Ladies scream.
What???!! And, of course, the best part is that I reacted with considerable surprise to this, resulting in the immediate memorization of every word of the song by Rebecca 3.8 (that means 3 years, 8 months old, a convention borrowed from my favorite blog for entertaining reading: dubiousquality.blogspot.com).
She sings along with it and cackles in amusement every time that song plays. For the second and third and gazillionth time.

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