Thursday, July 29, 2010

Sing a song of sixpence, and heroin, and studs

My daughter Claire never stops talking. Or singing. My husband has an addiction to YouTube and plays videos through pretty much every meal, and after until I tell him to stop and do something else. You expect Claire to sing a song of sixpence, or other children's ditties, at age four. You expect her to sing a few verses of her parents' favorites or her favorites (although I never picked up much from Wagner's Ring cycle, but my parents weren't very cool). Currently, Tom Petty's The Waiting is her favorite song, and she has yet to catch on that every time she asks her dad to play that on the laptop that he makes her wait. On Saturday in the car we played most of the soundtrack to Oh Brother Where Art Thou going to and from Hannah's hippotherapy, and not unsurprisingly, she declared Big Rock Candy Mountain her new second most favorite song. But the current song you most hear from her is the Mighty Mighty Bosstones' Royal Oil, which I am fairly certain is about heroin. I find it somewhat disconcerting that she is popping around the house singing "sleep down in the soil, nothing comes from nothing comes from royal oil."

For reasons no one can really explain, all little girls love the film Grease. Maybe a young hot John Travolta explains it, but I digress. Claire's little friend who is roughly her age has Grease and MamaMia and loves to watch her movies and sing along. I imagine we are celebrating an anniversary of the film, but a theatre in our area will be showing Grease the Sing Along movie, and so along with my friends, and Claire's friend we are planning to take Claire to see the film. I don't really expect her to follow the story entirely, but we have in the past shown her the video on YouTube of We Go Together and she thought it delightful, so I agreed to take her because I thought she'd be highly entertained by a theatre full of people singing along to every song (I will). So, to help her know the songs better so she could join in, we decided to school her in some of the numbers she didn't already have familiarity with. First up, Lord Honey picks You're the One That I Want, which begins with Olivia Newton John saying "tell me about it, stud." Immediately Claire says "his name is Stud!". I try to downplay things, tell her it is just a nickname, like when I call Daddy "Muffin." Next we played Summer Nights, and my face turned a funny shade of pink watching the hip thrusts. Lord Honey offered to play Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee and I had to put a stop to it.

I'm telling myself she'll focus on the popcorn.

4 comments:

  1. My children love Mamma Mia as well, and I always find it disconcerting to see a two yr old watching this paternity question unfold. It does keep 'em quiet for an hour and a half, though, so who's complaining?

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  2. my children love Grease 2 and every day, i'm so sorry i introduced it to them.

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  3. Too funny! I let Monkey watch Grease on TV not long ago - and I had a few awkward questions come at me. "Why does she feel like a typewriter, Mom?" Uh oh...

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  4. Yeah...just...yeah. I understand!

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