Dear Solitary Reader,
As someone who often dickers around with words I recognize their importance. Words have meaning. Words have power.
x-Tangent: Christmas has hit the house hot and heavy. Normally I would be doing my usual routine at Christmas, closing down orphanages, filling the work houses; you know, decreasing the surplus population. But with two children under six in the house I can’t help but get caught up with the Christmas fever.
As such, It’s not unusual to hear my daughter singing “Jingle Bells” repeatedly… time after time… over and over…. and over. Really, it was cute the first 4,000 times but its starting to wear a little thin. I’ve been running Tom’s Diner night and day through my skull, and so far its holding its own – but soon the walls will crack, like the impenetrable fortress of Helm’s Deep, and a whole lot of of Uruk’hai in skimpy elven costumes will be jingling their bells while I weep for the loss of my sanity.
I didn’t complain when it was time to put up the Christmas tree, I didn’t even complain when it was time to put up the Christmas lights. I even risked life and limb and climbed up to the roof to put lights on the top tier (avoiding the donkey on the roof who kept throwing the damn barrels full of fiddlers down at me).
This year I caught a case of the Christmas no cream can cure; ain’t no lotion can disabuse my Christmas notion.
y-tangent: My son is awesome.
He has a pretty good voice for a now five year old. He can hold a tune as well and can sing pretty much the entire songbook from the Thomas the Tank Engine suite of music.
One thing he does not have, however, is a grasp of lyrics. He’s only five and I can already tell he’s going to be one of those peoples who sings the wrong words at the top of his lungs.
A case in point: one of the movies, as a child under four, which he fell in love with was Cars. One of the main songs from this automotive cinematic classic’s sound track was a version of Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway” performed by Rascal Flats.
My son, bless his hearing, would not be cured of the idea the chorus, instead of progressing “Life is a highway/I want to drive it all night long” would sing: “Life is a highway/I want to drive it on my lawn.” Some of this was maybe his recognizing the fact he did not have his licence yet and was prohibited by law from driving on a highway, but you get my point.
Intersection: So as my daughter belts out Jingle Bells non-stop my son, in his unabashed way, has joined in with his rather liberal sense of the lyrics. For the most part his lyrical insertions are fairly innocent, with the exception of this particular song.
Where you might know the song as “Dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh” the pride and joy of my loins bearing the y-chromosome (and y IS the loneliest chromosome) has begun belting out loudly (and if you read the title of this blog then you’re not going to be surprised): “Dashing through the snow in a One Whore Open Sleigh.”
Because my mind wanders off in that direction rather readily, I thought of composing a tune called Jingle Balls… but I decided that because I would a) get in trouble and b) be plagiarizing someone I didn’t bother.
I tried to explain to him the real words, but he’s my son, and as Martin men we are genetically immune to common sense and/or rationality. He’s refusing to accept my edited lyrics.
It’s also hard to explain the real words when you’re laughing. Like his father he knows when he’s got the crowd hooked.
At some point I know he’s going to glom on to the real words, but until then the one whore open sleigh continues to ride the powder.
