As I look through my posts so far on this website, I feel like I’ve written more about music than anything else. If I had to guess, I’d say the second most common theme might be my kids. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before I wrote a post about the music to which my kids are listening. I think I can break it all down into three categories: Classic Kid Songs, Songs That Might Be Classics But I Didn’t Know, and Cool Kid Songs.
When it comes to Classic Kid Songs, I find that I hear them a little differently than I did as a kid. Much like with my Lyrical Breakdown posts, there are new meanings or angles in virtually all of them. For example, I said to my lovely wife a couple of days ago, “Ya know, I’d be pretty pissed off if I were that doctor.” “What doctor?” she asked (and rightfully so). “The one who keeps telling that mom that the monkeys shouldn’t be allowed to jump on the bed anymore. He needs to transfer that client to another physician because she clearly isn’t listening. Oh look, another head wound from letting your monkeys do exactly what I told you not to let them do five f’n times already.” She gave me a look that I’m pretty sure meant, “I love/am concerned that you think like that.”
Along the same lines, I have no idea how someone plays Knick-Knack. Maybe I missed that day at recess, but it seems to be a pretty versatile game. It can apparently be played on a shoe, on a knee, with some sticks, etc. Ok, buckle in for a second because I’m about to blow the door off this one – I just looked at the lyrics on Wikipedia, and I’m more disturbed than ever. In the order of least-to-most problematic:
3. There are 20 frickin’ verses to this song? That was overly ambitious (as evidenced by the horrible rhymes of “thirteen” with “curtain” and “fourteen” with “autumn”). Let’s try to forget those ever happened.
2. In verse number seven, the old man plays Knick-Knack “up in heaven” or “on the way to heaven,” depending on how you know it. Either way, has the main character been dead the entire time a la “The Sixth Sense” and we never realized it? Who’s this creepy kid playing games with a deceased old man for twenty verses?
1. Oh boy, the creepiness goes both ways it appears. Looking at the lyrics, “This Old Man” should probably be called “This Pervy Ghost.” I still don’t know what Knick-Knack is, but the old/dead man plays it on the narrator’s thumb (or tongue, as a scarier alternate lyric says), his shoe, and his knee to start the song. The pedophile’s getting more daring going up to the knee, wouldn’t you say? Well, in verse five, there’s an alternate lyric of playing this “game” on the speaker’s thigh. And in verse nine, he’s on the kid’s spine. I’m just glad that there are no numbers that rhyme with “uvula” or “anus,” because I’m pretty sure the old man would skip to those numbers as quickly as possible.
Crap, I had no intention of spending that long on one particular song. To summarize, I don’t really get or like that song anymore. But do you know who loves that song? The dog. That dog gets a bone every single verse (before the old man mysteriously “rolls” home – is he an obese pedophile ghost?). Good dog, now go learn how to report your owner to the authorities.
I’m going to stop here for now. I went a little overboard, so I’ll save the second and third categories for a later date. If I ruined “This Old Man” for you, I don’t apologize in the slightest. But if I got it stuck in your head for the rest of the day, I do feel a little sorry about that.
