Love is a tune you hum-de-hum-hum

A couple of weeks ago, Bede took Lucia to the park to throw boomerangs. Bede's first (and favorite) boomerang immediately got gobbled up by one of the park trees. Despite that initial disappointment, Bede and Lucia had a good time with the boomerangs in the park, and "boomerang" replaced "barnacle" as her favorite word of the moment. I decided to look for songs about boomerangs.

As you could have probably guessed, love is like a boomerang.

Some songs, like T-Bone Burnett's Boomerang, were catchy but not appropriate for young ears (i.e. "He broke into the bedroom/ They put him on the spot/He took off his pistol/ They never heard the shots/ They were headed for a crash/ And it even hurt to laugh/ Cause it ended with a bang/ When it all came back like a boomerang"). I finally settled on one of ABBA's silly but delightful ditties, "Bang-a-Boomerang":

Like a bang, a boom-a-boomerang
Dum-be-dum-dum be-dum-be-dum-dum
Oh bang, a boom-a-boomerang
Love is a tune you hum-de-hum-hum
So give it away, I think you'll learn
You'll get love in return
So bang, a boom-a-boomerang is love
A boom-a-boomerang is love

You can see the original video here.

And you can see and hear my daughter's rendition (complete with arm motions copied by Agnetha and Ani-Frid from "Mamma Mia") here:

Song of the Week: Yes Indeedy

When Yellow Submarine was the Song of the Week, the Goddess of Clarity wrote in that the song was one that a nun taught her to play on the guitar. She added, "Another favorite was 'Yes Indeedy Pumpkin Seedy,' which I sadly can't find a reference to online."

Six weeks later, a commenter named Ldyvic posted that Joe Wise sings a children's song called "Yes Indeedy," and pointed me to iTunes. (I found it on Amazon, too, as a MP3 file.) Giamusic distributes Joe Wise's music, and you can find this song and others on The Best of Joe Wise Music for Kids Vol. II. I wrote to Joe Wise to ask him if he was the author of the song (since he covered other people's songs on his albums), and he replied, "Yes indeedy, pumpkin seedy Yes I am the author, though if any kid sings it all across the country in the car on the family vacation I'll deny authorship in any court."

Here are the lyrics to the song as I've transcribed them:

Yes Indeedy
By Joe Wise

Yes indeedy, pumpkin seedy
No siree bob, hey diddle corn cob
Yeah but no but wait a minute, could be so
Maybe baby, chicken and gravy
Don’t be silly saspirilly
Hardly yardly, bailing up barley, pick a little, I don’t know!

My Uncle Fred had a problem in his head
So I hear tell from my old Auntie Kay
He could make up his bed but not up his mind
In answer to most any question, this is what he said:

Chorus

My Uncle Zeke had some funny thinking streaks
He would sit for days just wandering in his head
After weeks of sitting a’whittling and a’spitting
You asked him if he wanted supper, this is what he said:

Chorus

Uncle Fred and Zeke were driving on a peak
When the car went to the edge, Zeke yelled out, “Brakes!
Should we put them on, old Fred?” was the last thing that they said
And you could hear them singing standing at the Pearly Gates:

Chorus

Little boxes

As of this week, "Little Boxes," by Malvina Reynolds, is Lucia's favorite song. Reynolds wrote the song in 1962 as a criticism of suburban sprawl and the most mundane aspects of middle class values. Pete Seeger's cover of "Little Boxes" is probably the most popular. Here are Reynolds' lyrics:

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.

And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

--Malvina Reynolds

When I play the song on the guitar for Lucia, I'm tempted to make the "little boxes" relevant to the modern-day townhouses popping up all over our neighborhood: "There's a beige one, and a beige one, and a beige one, and a BEIGE one...." However, I suspect that the different colors are what Lucia likes best about the song. Warning: this song is an earworm.* Once you get it stuck in your head, it's hard to change tunes. Speaking of earworms, MotherReader is completely to blame for introducing me to Bowling For Soup's "1985". In her defense, it's a good song. Still, my brain has been chewing on it since March.

While I'm singing "Little Boxes," it's easy to think, "Other people may live in little boxes, but I don't." Hah. Throughout my 35 years, I've blended in sometimes and other times have stuck out. Many of times I've stuck out have been miserable. The one week in 6th grade in which I wore designer jeans like "everyone else's" designer jeans. By the end of the week, there was some whispering and jeering about how I'd worn the same pair of jeans every day (I had). I snidely told them, "No, I have three other pairs of the same kind of jeans in my closet." They believed me. They actually believed me. I had nothing but contempt for them. I also felt a little sorry for myself (as if from a distance) because I'd wanted to blend in so badly.

Times changed. I had peers who thought it was cool to like bands that no one else knew about. Once those bands found commercial success, any one who learned about the bands afterward was just following the mainstream.

Yawn. "Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same." But hey, I'm fine with living in a little box, as long as it's my little box, and I get to decorate it how I like. I guess I'm not heading for the gated community up the hill any time soon.

*I just found out that the Portuguese term for a song getting stuck in one's head is called chiclete de ouvido, or "ear chewing-gum."