I am sitting atop a five year-old blue area rug as the timid, gangly librarian greets us with her friend, the fifty year-old once-purple spider puppet. Her eyes are so tiny that I find myself searching for the person beneath them, and out it peeks with a nervous giggle as she shifts her weight in the chair. Awkwardly, I encourage Chas to sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider; it’s surreal to be repeating this same archaic fingerplay with my children. I’m tired of this, and I’ll not reminisce about this moment when I am sixty-four. The Itsy Bitsy Spider has hung around the waterspout way too long, it needs a new venue, to broaden its horizons. I suggest setting sail for the Spanish riviera.
Ford is being patient as I tolerate the spider song. He understands the pain; I think he feels it himself. He tumbles in breakdance acrobatics around the three other mother-child pairs, threatening their two year-oldness with his four year-old rebellion. One mother flinches as Ford jumps in her face. What is he doing?! But wait! This is his method, and it’s difficult being completely objective when reacting so easy. But I call him closer. He jumps back in my direction, clearly to tell me off, and I find myself flinching.
“These songs are not my kind of songs. My kind of songs are…,” his straw-colored curls bounce and his eyes flare, “the White Stripes, and the Strokes, and Beck, and Kings of Leon….,”
Blood flushes to my face, and I find relief when I realize these mothers probably have never heard of Kings of Leon, much less trained their ears to understand the slurred lyrics (not that Ford has),
“…this music is na-nee na-nee BOH-ring…”
amen! my emma, also four, has definitely moved on from itsy bitsy to things like jack johnson and eva cassidy. her taste is so “mature”…!!
Ok, What is the Kings of Leon?…. and the others while you are educating an old grandma.
I like Ford’s honesty, self confidence and maturity—he has too great a mind to waste on the spider. It painfully reminds me of how we did not expect enough of children born in my time. We were in, and thankfully, coming out of an age of repression, when teachers were taught to force kids into submission as if they were all potential monsters underneath that not for one minute could they think or act independently or you had failed as a teacher. As you saw, they sadly became a product of their own philosophy.