A long, long time ago, by which I mean ‘before Facebook,’ we had some kids. These days, those kids are all teenagers, but that wasn’t always the case! They were young, even like unto babies, and SOBUMD and I were completely new at parenting. (These days we’re such old hats at parenting that we run seminars. And by seminars, I mean about recreational alcoholism.)
But the point is that there are stories that were missed, because we were too freaked out to write them down, fill in the little embellishments, add the filigree, and post them, and also because we weren’t blogging at the time. Also, blogging wasn’t much of a thing back then, but that’s less of an excuse. And so, I’m going to try to add a few True Tales From the Crypt of Early Parenthood.
We will begin with Counting.
One day, when the kids were small, we had a playdate with friends who had small kids as well. By small, think 4 or 5 or so. My kids were running around with blocks and singing songs. Their kids were running around with balls and singing songs. We and our friends were sitting around with drinks and talking about how tired we were. We got on the topic of knowing their numbers and how much fun it is to watch them struggle with the digits, and I had to go open my big mouth and show how smart the Human Tape Recorder was. “Hey, come over here and show how you count to ten!” (Our friends were also techies, just so that’s understood.)
HTR: “Sure! 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10!”
They were duly impressed. Having learned to count in hexadecimal before learning basic math is probably why she hasn’t scored less than a 97% on any given math test. (She’s now in college studying math that would Einstein barf.)
Suddenly, a voice from the din: “Hey, I know! Let’s sing the Counting Song!”
All the kids decided this was a wonderful thing, since it seemed all the kids knew the counting song. “You know the counting song?”
“Yeah!”
“Great!”
And with no further prompting and no accompaniment required, the other kids started singing: “Well, there’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 wheels on a Big Rig! And they’re Rolling, rolling, rolling; Rolling, rolling, rolling…”
They trailed off. My kids looked at them like they’d just sprouted an extra head and some kind of a 4-headed, country-truck-song-singing quadruped had just landed on the carpet. “THAT’s not the counting song!” said mine, with the indignant authority of a 5-year old who knows her numbers. “Ours goes like this:”
And just before they started to sing, I realized what the counting song was. Too late.
“I take one, one, one ’cause you left me
And two, two, two for my family
And three, three, three for my heartache
And four, four, four for my headache
And five, five, five for my lonely
And six, six, six for my sorrow
And seven, seven – no tomorrow
And eight, eight, I forget what eight was for
But nine, nine, nine for a lost god
And ten, ten, ten, ten for everything, everything, everything, everything!”
I was torn between proud and horrified, and settled for a kind of horrible pride. Our friends allowed as how that was the funniest thing they’d ever heard, really, but oh look at the time, we need to be going, let’s pack it up guys. For reasons that were never made entirely clear, there were no further playdates. I’m sure it went down in our permanent record somewhere.
So, let this be a lesson to all you young parents – if you don’t teach your kids about numbers, the Violent Femmes will. I leave you with both songs, so you can do your own side-by-side comparison. Or, teach your kids to count. But not in Hex.
(Trout Fishing in America)
(Violent Femmes)