Kids Say--and Play--the Darnedest Things

Today was my sister's birthday, so we got to have a long phone conversation for the first time in a while; my busy teaching schedule and her more-than-full-time job as a mother of two kids under the age of five limit us to quickly-dashed-off emails a lot of the time.

Since kids that young grow up so fast, I always get to hear about the new things that one or the other of my nephews can do. What I heard today really surprised me: they're both into the Beatles! Even though I've been a musician of some sort since sixth grade, my childhood music-listening never got much past "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (which, granted, has an interesting history). My four-year-old nephew, Noah, has a CD that his daddy burned him with a bunch of Beatles songs, and he's made some interesting observations:

• "John and Paul write the best songs."


• "George doesn't write good songs like John and Paul." (My sister corrected him so that I think he now knows that George simply didn't write as many good songs as John and Paul.)


• "Ringo doesn't sing very good...but he does sing "Octopus's Garden" and that's a very good song."

My 2-year-old nephew Caleb is getting into the act, too: he can sing part of "Hey Jude." It's mostly the "na, na-na na-na-na naaaaah" part, but still, it was funny (I got treated to a rendition over the phone). Just wait till I play them the Maynard version in a few years...

I really need to go down and visit them; it's been way too long. But for now, the Dread Sked needs to be created. I've put it off till now, but the public schools start in two weeks (*shudder*). I think I'm going to either need to come up with human cloning or the addition of an extra day to the week to make this work, but we'll see.

John also writes more expensive songs than George: A handwritten lyric sheet with John Lennon's lyrics to "All You Need is Love" has sold for a million dollars at an auction in London.