Woddyodda

Woddyodda. This is the newest word in Heero's four-year-old vocabulary, and it's all my fault. But the story of how this came to be is innocent enough.

Who knew a duck could be immortal? Yet, that's exactly what has happened in the case of the children's folk song "The Little White Duck," penned by Walt Whippo and Bernard Zaritsky in 1950 and popularized by singer Burl Ives in the '60s.

Flash back to that wonderful time, and you would see me, the future-Googie, spinning out song after song on my little suitcase-style record player from Sears and  Roebuck. A favorite in my repertoire was a 45-rpm version of "The Little White Duck," a record I talked my dad into buying for me on one of our evening trips to the neighborhood grocery store for milk and lunch meat.

It is easy to see why this little ditty has survived the test of time. Simply put, it is a charming compilation of all the things children love--animal characters, animal sounds that are fun to imitate and listen to, rhyme and rhythm, a catchy melody, lyrical repetition, dialogue, and a good, action-filled story-line. (If you don't know this song, or just need a refresher, take a trip to YouTube and let Burl Ives or Danny Kaye serenade your inner-child.) 

Now fast forward to 2007, when The Era of Grandkids began. I don't exaggerate a bit when I say that all six of them, as preschoolers, have loved "The Little White Duck," asking for it time and time again, especially as I am tucking them in bed. This means I have sung this song an infinite number of times for nearly eleven years now.

Last weekend, when Heero and Beenie spent the night, was no different. But this time, as the song ended, Heero had a question.

"Googie," he asked. "What's woddyodda?"

At first I was stumped. Where in the world did this word come from? But after a few slow, sleepy seconds I figured it out. The key to the mystery lay right there, in the lyrics of "The Little White Duck."

The song begins, "There's a little white duck/sitting in the water. A little white duck/doing what he oughta." There it was: I guess my slurry, sleepy singing voice (combined with my hillbilly accent) does not articulate the best. Instead of "what he oughta," Heero heard woddyodda. And he wanted to know just exactly what in the world it was that the duck and other animals had been "doing."

I gave some lame explanation about the animals doing what was right for them. "A duck is supposed to sit in the water," I said. "A little black bug is supposed to float."

"I always do woddyodda," Heero told me, adding that sometimes his brother fell a little short. And just like that, he owned a new word.

And this, my friends, is how retired teachers of English adulterate the vocabularies of their grandkids. Unfortunately, in Heero's case, it doesn't stop there. I am also responsible for his love of piracy.

Yes, that is a meat cleaver he is wielding. Both it and the costume come from an after-Halloween Dollar General clearance sale (90% off!) that I just couldn't resist.

But that's another story.



   

Things in the Sky

I doubt that Mozart, composing his variations on an old French melody, had any inkling that the little tune would go down in history as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." Or, that lyricist Jane Taylor, penning her six-stanza poem beginning with the aforementioned line, imagined in 1806 that her first stanza would be a childhood staple for generations of children to come.

Lately I have been contemplating the appeal of this charmingly simple nursery rhyme/ lullaby. Why do children like it so much? Possibly, I am speculating, because they seem fascinated by the things they see in the sky.

On several occasions lately I have found myself lying flat on my back on the floor with Beenie staring up at a bedroom ceiling where there is nothing but a fan. Yet, he loves to tell me what he "sees" in the "sky" there, including airplanes (and, more recently, helicopters), clouds, and the usual host of celestial bodies.

This may be why, at nap time yesterday, he wasn't content to stop with "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"; he wanted me to sing about the moon and sun as well. Should you ever find yourself in need of additional verses to pacify your little astro-babes, we offer several of yesterday's variations for your consideration.  The one I like best is about the moon:

Shining, shining, silver moon,
Mellow as the month of June,
Blue as sapphire, cast your light;
Beam serenely through the night,
Shining, shining silver moon,
Mellow as the month of June.

Or, perhaps your child of summer prefers to sing about the sun, in which case we offer this one:

Blazing, blazing, golden sun,
Lie down when your day is done,
Bathing with a ruby glow
Every creature here below;
Blazing, blazing, golden sun,
Lie down when your day is done.

Over the years the kids and I have gotten a lot of mileage out of made-up, off-the-wall verses for existing songs. I would encourage you to share the same kind of creative wordplay with your kiddos.

Of course, if not all the things your sky-gazer wants to sing about are as pleasant and peaceful as those above, you will have to improvise accordingly.  Say, for instance, your child spots a buzzard:

Buzzard, Buzzard, circle down.
Tell your buddies, "Gather 'round"--

OK.  I'll stop right there. This "darker" subject matter would appeal less to Beenie and more to Pooh, with his quirky sense of humor and his affinity for the "bad guy." For now, we will stick to the romantic notion of sun, moon, and stars.

Whatever the case, you and your kids can have a great time with your own song lyrics. When you get your imaginations going, the limit is--well--the sky.

Fuzzy Wuzzy Lost His . . . What?

Today's CD's seem to spin around under a closed door at warp speed.  I am sorry for modern kids who will never get to watch the mesmerizing revolutions of those little yellow grooved 78-rpm records or their close relatives, the 45's, into which we either had to insert a plastic adapter to fit the spindles of our little suitcase-style record players or twist up an apparatus on the player itself to accommodate the 45s' larger center hole.  Fellow Boomers, you will know exactly what I am talking about.  Youngsters, you won't, but please keep reading anyway.  This is really not a piece about record players.

Rather, it is about little kids and singing and the fun things we can do with words to make songs our own.  Of late, Sooby and Pooh have done much to remind me of these simple joys.  What, for instance, might Old MacDonald have on his farm instead of the usual animals?  He could have a cactus, with a stick-stick here and a stick-stick there and, well, you get the idea.  Does Little Bo Peep have trouble losing only her sheep, or might she also lose, say, her flip-flop?  Sorry if I am disturbing those well-established and deeply implanted childhood images you have carried around in your head all your life, but I am trying to prepare you for what is coming here.

Call me demented, but one of my favorite childhood songs, which I listened to again and again as it spun around in front of me at 45 rpm, was "Fuzzy Wuzzy."  Maybe you have heard it.  It goes something like this:

          Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.
          Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair.
          Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, was he?
          Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his mop
          In a North Pole barber shop.
          Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, was he?

Sooby and Pooh love this song.  But I had sung it to each of them only a few times before they insisted on changing the lyrics to reflect their unique little worldview.

Sooby, who heard the song first, simply could not stand the idea of a world in which a bear would be without hair.  Thus, her variation of the song had to correct this obvious deficiency:

          Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.
          Fuzzy Wuzzy had some hair.
          Fuzzy Wuzzy was fuzzy, wasn't he?

As for the original song's details on how Fuzzy had purportedly lost his mop, she simply chose to ignore them.  We had to skip that part when we sang.  If a bear was not going to be hairy like he was supposed to be, she didn't want to hear about it.

The last time I sang this song with Pooh, however, it took on some new dimensions that the original songwriter could never have imagined.  It was Pooh's job to decide what new body part Fuzzy Wuzzy would lose next; it was my mission to find a silly rhyme that would make the new lyrics work within the established meter of the song.  Here are some of our variations of Lines 4 and 5 of the original song:

• Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his nose./Sprayed it with a garden hose.
• Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his lip/On a big black pirate ship.
• Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his mouth./He went north and it went south.         
• Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his knee/Climbing up an apple tree.
• Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his leg./Found it in an Easter egg.
• Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his arm/In the woods on Pa-pa's farm.
• Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his chin./Found it, then it left again.
• Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his ear./After that, he couldn't hear.
• Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his head./Found it underneath the bed.
• Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his eye./Baked it in a cherry pie.  (I know--gross!) 

I will stop while I'm ahead.  My point is that Pooh absolutely loved this silly game.  He loved thinking up new body parts for the song, and, as for some of those he suggested, I will leave them to your imagination.  Keep in mind that he is a boy, and even at age 2 1/2 this seems to influence his worldview.

I loved it too--the one-on-one time with him, the wordplay, the idea of our creating something unique together.  We began with a silly song and gained a rich and beautiful bonding experience.  As far as I can tell, the only one who lost was Fuzzy Wuzzy himself--and by the time we were finished, I have to admit, he had lost just about everything.     



 
     

Saved by a Song

For the longest time, I had no trouble singing my grandkids to sleep.  It seemed that, no matter how hard they fought bedtime, I would finally stumble vocally onto that one tune that, when sung over and over, would induce the desired effect.  One time it was the ever-circular motion of "The Wheels on the Bus" that did the trick; another time they wound down as the monotonous ticking of "My Grandfather's Clock" quieted them with its haunting, hypnotic melody.

Lately, however, it has been more of a challenge to find that one magic song.  The problem is, the kids have learned most of my bedtime songs, and they insist on staying awake to sing them with me.  When you consider that this is happening at the end of the day when I am pretty well worn and ragged, you may grasp the scope and seriousness of my predicament.

I will be the first to admit that it was cute at first.  These are the children of music professionals, so there is no shortage of innate musical talent at work here, even at the tender ages of two and three.  I have learned not to take it personally that they actually sound better than I do.  I have tried not to take it personally that they have less trouble remembering all those lyrics than I do.

Night before last, I thought I was finally going to have to admit defeat.  We were at the stage where I was bone-weary and hoarse and hardly able to hold my head up.  They, on the other hand, still teemed with musical life.  I would only start a song, one I thought they might not remember, when they would take it over and go for the encore.  If I had stopped singing entirely, I seriously doubt if they'd have noticed.

What saved my life that night was a song I reached way back into the '70s for, and where the words came from, I don't know, since I have successfully managed to forget most of what I was doing in the '70s.  But there they were, pouring out of my mouth like honey, sweet and thick and sticky and absolutely irresistible.  More importantly, they were pouring out against a backdrop of complete and utter silence.  Hard to believe as it was and still is, Sooby and Pooh were entirely captivated by James Taylor's "Sweet Baby James."

I can't help wondering what they were thinking.  Did this young cowboy look like Woody from Toy Story?   Was he supposed to be thinking about women and glasses of beer?  What are dogies?  Who is this Sweet Baby James anyway?   What is a Berkshire, and why is there frosting on it?  What flavor is the frosting?

Actually, I doubt if they thought any of these things.  Rather, I think they were mesmerized by the poetry and simple, soothing melody of this gentle lullaby Taylor composed in 1969 while enroute to meet his baby nephew and namesake.  I could speculate that, even some forty years later, these children recognized, as the original Baby James must have, the perfect blending of words and music into a masterpiece that quietly celebrates the power of song and its capacity to soothe and calm the restless human spirit.  But here is what I know for sure: there was not a peep out of either child from the time I began the song, and somewhere during the third time through, they both slipped off into the deep greens and blues of their own sweet dreams.

Pulling the door to their room shut, I waited to hear the soft click of the latch.  Then, I smiled my way down the hall to my own bedroom. Good night, you moonlight babies, I thought.  You have about ten miles behind you and ten thousand more to go.