Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Lullaby Letdowns #1

So apparently, the second verse of Rock-A-Bye Baby does not go "Rock-a-bye baby, safe on the floor, we don't put babies in trees anymore / but if you keep crying, we'll revert to his-to-ry / and you, little baby / will be in a tree."

Apparently, my mom made that up. Total fabrication!

And I bought it, hook, line and sinker. What a sap!

What a chump.

4 comments:

Lunarchick said...

So THAT'S where your song writing talents come from! :-)

dogimo said...

You may be right! Either via straight genetics, or the full-immersion Neil Sedaka method.

"Solitaire" still brings a tear to my eye.

Mel said...

I hear you on this Joe. I find most nursery rhymes and childhood ditties morbidly scary or downright just plain creepy.

Like the first time someone tells you “Ring a Ring o’ Rosie” is actually about the black plague and when you all fall down it’s because you JUST DIED. But before you died you would have been in enormous pain caused by the actual decaying of the skin while YOU WERE STILL ALIVE.

When you get told that, you can actually hear your innocence being crushed.

dogimo said...

You know, I kind of like the morbid, semi-messed up stuff like the uncensored Grimm's fairy tales or old-school nursery rhymes. Albeit, I wasn't aware of the deeper meanings of some of them - others, it was quite impossible to miss the grim, grisly aspect! Right on the surface.

I would argue that a sense of how dangerous the big bad world can be is an essential component of youthful innocence, and that loss of innocence occurs not when we realize the world can be a grim and horrible place, but when we realize we are equal to the task of confronting that world on its own terms, and living to tell the tale.

Grisly as the tale can get, at times! :-D