How do you learn that stuff, anyway?

The kids are getting old enough that we are starting to have (or overhear) some great conversations around these parts. Here's a little sampler from the weekend.

Over lunch

Son: "How come chicken is the only meat that doesn't have a different name when it's cooked?"

Me: "Well..."

Son: "I mean, cow is beef when it's cooked, and pig is pork. How come chicken is just chicken all the time?"

Me: "That is an excellent question."

*crickets*

Yet another Mama-stumper. Score one for Son.

In the car

Son: "Don't sing so loud. It's too loud. PLEASE! Don't sing so loud. You are singing tooooooo loud!!!!"

Daughter: [pausing in her extremely loud singing of "Sweet Escape" by Gwen Stefani and pointing to Husband and I in the front seats] "I have to sing loud. I like to. It makes them laugh."

As Husband and I try to control our completely out-of-control snorting with laughter at this very perceptive response, all I can think is: score one for Daughter.

While playing Trivial Pursuit

[As an aside, this is either a horrible game or a perfect game to play with small children, depending on your patience for creative thinking. We have the original edition, which seems perfectly pitched for someone born in 1939. As a result, neither Husband nor I can answer a solid 50% of the questions. You can imagine how the children would fare. While they are great with the ones about fairy tales, Disney movies, and first-grade science, everything else is pretty awful. So I make up questions for them when we draw cards that of course they will be unable to answer.]

I drew a card this weekend for Son that contained a question that brought back a flood of happy memories from my childhood. The question was, "What ran through the briars and ran through the brambles and ran through the bushes where the rabbits couldn't go?"

I knew those song lyrics immediately, and was instantly transported back to being nine years old and dancing and singing loudly (perhaps because it would make them laugh?) to a whole bevy of funny songs: "He's a clown, that Charlie Brown" and "Monster Mash" and "Purple People Eater."

So when I pulled the card, I knew Son wouldn't know the song, but I could not resist smiling and reminiscing, and telling him that I remembered the song it asked about. Of course, he wanted to hear it, so I sang a bit of it for him, up through the lyrics on the card. I paused.

"HOW do you know that song?" he asked wide-eyed.

"Oh," I replied. "Your aunties and I had a record with this song and lots of other funny ones on it, and we used to sing and dance to it all the time."

His eyes, if possible, got even wider. I thought he was trying to imagine my sisters and me as children not much older than himself, singing and dancing our way around the family room.

Practically breathless, he asked, "What's a record?"

I almost fell over laughing.

Score one for Mama.

Here's a video of the hilarious/politically obnoxious/totally random song in question, and believe me when I tell you that although it's been approximately 30 years since I heard this song, I still know every single word and can sing along.




So now that I've fessed up to this absurdity, please tell me that there is some goofy song from your childhood, or odd skill, or hidden talent from way back when that you still possess.

And then, please to enjoy imagining me dancing around the family room at age nine, yelping and yodeling and practicing my Southernisms full-throttle to "The Battle of New Orleans."