A long, long time ago, by which I mean ‘before Facebook,’ we had some kids.\u00a0 These days, those kids are all teenagers, but that wasn’t always the case!\u00a0 They were young, even like unto babies, and SOBUMD and I were completely new at parenting.\u00a0 (These days we’re such old hats at parenting that we run seminars.\u00a0 And by seminars, I mean about recreational alcoholism.)<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Also, blogging wasn’t much of a thing back then, but that’s less of an excuse.\u00a0 And so, I’m going to try to add a few True Tales From the Crypt of Early Parenthood.<\/p>\n
We will begin with Counting.<\/p>\n
One day, when the kids were small, we had a playdate with friends who had small kids as well.\u00a0 By small, think 4 or 5 or so.\u00a0 My kids were running around with blocks and singing songs.\u00a0 Their kids were running around with balls and singing songs.\u00a0 We and our friends were sitting around with drinks and talking about how tired we were.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 “Hey, come over here and show how you count to ten!”\u00a0 (Our friends were also techies, just so that’s understood.)<\/p>\n
HTR:\u00a0 “Sure!\u00a0 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10!”<\/p>\n
They were duly impressed.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 (She’s now in college studying math that would Einstein barf.)<\/p>\n
Suddenly, a voice from the din:\u00a0 “Hey, I know!\u00a0 Let’s sing the Counting Song!”<\/p>\n
All the kids decided this was a wonderful thing, since it seemed all the kids knew the counting song.\u00a0 “You know the counting song?”<\/p>\n
“Yeah!”<\/p>\n
“Great!”<\/p>\n
And with no further prompting and no accompaniment required, the other kids started singing:\u00a0 “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!\u00a0 And they’re Rolling, rolling, rolling; Rolling, rolling, rolling…”<\/p>\n
They trailed off.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 “THAT’s not the counting song!” said mine, with the indignant authority of a 5-year old who knows her numbers.\u00a0 “Ours goes like this:”<\/p>\n
And just before they started to sing, I realized what the counting song was.\u00a0 Too late.<\/p>\n
“I take one, one, one ’cause you left me
\nAnd two, two, two for my family
\nAnd three, three, three for my heartache
\nAnd four, four, four for my headache
\nAnd five, five, five for my lonely
\nAnd six, six, six for my sorrow
\nAnd seven, seven – no tomorrow
\nAnd eight, eight, I forget what eight was for
\nBut nine, nine, nine for a lost god
\nAnd ten, ten, ten, ten for everything, everything, everything, everything!”<\/p>\n
I was torn between proud and horrified, and settled for a kind of horrible pride.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 For reasons that were never made entirely clear, there were no further playdates.\u00a0 I’m sure it went down in our permanent record somewhere.<\/p>\n
So, let this be a lesson to all you young parents – if you don’t teach your kids about numbers, the Violent Femmes will.\u00a0\u00a0I leave you with both songs, so you can do your own side-by-side comparison.\u00a0 Or, teach your kids to count.\u00a0 But not in Hex.<\/p>\n