All the baby books insist it doesn’t matter if you can sing on key, babies love to hear singing. Which is fine because 1) I love to sing and 2) as the cliche goes, I can’t carry a tune in a basket. I know some people say they can’t sing and then they open their mouths and something resembling a song comes out. Not me. Imagine cats in heat in the middle of the summer in the dead of night. I almost sound that good.
Anyway, I’m determined to sing to Doodlebug. But it turns out, I know the complete lyrics to exactly eleven songs, only six of which I can remember at any given time, and only three of those which are appropriate for a G rated audience. It turns out, I know between 35 and 73% of a whole lot of songs, but it’s discouraging when you get to that part where you just sort of trail off, because you don’t know what comes next. So, the songs I know that are okay to sing to Doodlebug are a mangled version of “Hush Little Baby” (my mother never knew what the lyrics were so she made up her own version, which I’m passing along), “The 59th Street Bridge Song,” and “Cruising Down the River” (a song from the ’40s that my father sang to me when I was little, because he didn’t know the words to any songs either). Then there are the okay songs, songs like “Satan Is My Motor” and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” And then there are the definitely-inappropriate-but-I’m-singing-them-anyway-because-I-don’t-know-what-else-to-do songs such as “F*ck and Run.” The Tweedle Twirp and I have spent the morning singing various lines, asking, “Do you remember what comes next?” I’m guessing it’s not going to be in Doodlebug’s future to be especially musical.
