Children's songs present a musical traffic hazard

One of these days, a police officer is going to pull me over for driving erratically. He will suspect that I am driving while intoxicated, but he will be wrong. In fact, I will be driving while being a little teapot.

I am often a little teapot while driving. This is because when my 20-month-old daughter is in the car, she demands to hear her favorite CD, "Traditional Children's Songs from Hell." At least that's what I call it. It's one of those CDs with those old songs that we are required by federal law to expose our children to, because they connect us with a time when we were a simpler, happier, much stupider nation.

Consider "Old MacDonald." It starts out fine: "Old MacDonald had a farm." But then it goes to "E-I-E-I-O," as though the lyricist had a bunch of extra vowels he needed to get rid of before moving on with the plot. Couldn't he have come up with WORDS for the second line? How hard is it to think of a line that rhymes with "farm"? For example: "Thresher tore off his left arm." Or: "Slept with six goats to keep warm."

But "Old MacDonald" is Handel's "Messiah" compared with "She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain," a song apparently written by somebody with a life-threatening case of attention deficit disorder, as we see by the highly informative first verse:

"She'll be comin' 'round the mountain when she comes!

"She'll be comin' 'round the mountain when she comes!

"She'll be comin' 'round the mountain!

"She'll be comin' 'round the mountain!

"She'll be comin' 'round mountain when she comes!"

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

Will she be comin' 'round the mountain?

When?

I am forced to listen to these brain-shriveling songs constantly when I drive. I'm so used to hearing them that sometimes I'll be halfway to the airport, singing "The wheels on the bus go round and round! Round and round! Round and round!" when suddenly it dawns on me: Sophie is not in the car. I can play my own music, with intelligent lyrics!

(Example: "I said na, na na na na, na na na na, na na na, na na na, na na na na!")