Oh My Freakin' Ears

A few months ago I bought Patrick a super-cheap CD set entitled "102 Full-Length Classic Children's Songs." If this was a radio station and I was the drone planning playlists in a city far, far away, I would say that these CDs are in light rotation around here. The woman's voice is not exactly pleasing but neither does it make me want to throw myself off the roof, so I was ok with 50 minutes of her singing once a week or so. Patrick is quite adept at turning his CD player on when he feels like a little music (Play with blocks, play with blocks, play with blocks, pause, hmmm, maybe some tunes, toddle, poke CD player with one finger, toddle back, play with blocks.) He can also turn it off when he recognizes the ineffability of silence. What I am not sure about is whether he puts certain songs on Repeat Play by design (the design being to drive me completely around the bend of madness) or by accident. Whatever the motivation, it will frequently dawn on me that I have been listening to the same song for an unconscionably long time. Today I realized that a tune had been playing over and over again for like 40 minutes and THAT was why I was reaching for the tequila before noon. It was only as I was climbing into the playroom to smash the CD player with a hammer or something that I recognized the song as "The Marine's Hymn." You know:

From the halls of Montezuma
To the shores of Tripoli
We will fight our country's ba-a-ttles
In the air, on land or sea...

We have fought in every clime and place
Where we could take a gun...

Now, I am as fond of the United States Marine Corp as the next girl. Semper Fi, motherfuckers, as yet another ex-boyfriend (one who knew what it meant to serve, nudge nudge) was fond of saying as he recalled his Parris Island days. But... classic children's song? No. Um, no. When I saw that the very next song on the CD was "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again" I began to wonder who put this compilation together in the first place. The Pentagon?

We are back to Raffi.