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Friday 31 May 2013

THE POX


[No, that is not the King]

The King and I are housebound as he has the pox. No, not the small, the chicken variety (thank god). The problem is, at the moment, he has no idea he is sick. So this means that I am trapped indoors with a child that may look a tad funny (he keeps looking at the spots exclaiming, ‘what’s that?!!’), but is operating on all cylinders. Let me assure you, it is challenging at best.

So far, we have cleaned everything there is to clean, including his pram, which we gave a bath outside with a full range of sponges and scrub brushes (I figured we may as prolong this activity as long as possible). He of course thought this was genius and began washing anything else he could see fit to wash: the plants, the patio floor, his sand table, and the fence. If it sat still, he was going to scrub it. He even tried to scrub-brush a pigeon that was foolhardy enough to fly into our yard. The best part of course was his uniform of tank top, underwear and rubber green boots. As you do.

Then he demanded we do some exercise. There is a website I go to that has a variety of workouts on it and to no one’s surprise, the King has turned out to be a wickedly (and annoyingly ruthless) trainer. He scolds me if I don’t follow along exactly, he tells me to put my shoes on, take them off, pick up the dumbbell, put it down, lift my leg etc. If I don’t mirror the instructor’s movements to a tee I’m going to hear about it. And of course, when I’m exhausted and want to stop, he reminds me, as only he can, that it’s far from over. ‘Get up, Mama!! Exercise.’ Sometimes he even climbs onto my back just to make the push up that much harder. I'm telling you, he could make serious money in Hollywood on the training circuit.

Of course, just when I think the pox may be taking hold and he might want to curl up and watch a movie, he decides that he wants to dance to ‘Usic,’ as he calls it. So as if the workout wasn’t enough, I now have to hold his hand (and that of his stuffed elephant) and dance around the room, often carrying him and swinging him in circles until I think I may puke. I’m telling you, being sick is utterly exhausting. Not that I want him to feel badly of course, one just always assumes that illness begets a changing of gears. And in boy toddler-rearing any slowing down of the engines is a very welcomed thing.

The other hard part about chicken pox is despite the fact that your child may feel good, his outer appearance scares the bejeezuz out of people. So even if you want to sneak outdoors for some fresh air and a quick nip to the shops, people single you out like you're a leper. Even though, most parents I know want their child to catch it to get it over with. There is a pocket of us that literally call one another when a child comes down with it, so the rest of us can scurry over and make our kid hug them until they catch it. It’s sadistic, yes, but trust me, a mild case at 3 years old beats a bad case at 21…then again, by 21, I’m sure the King will be well adept at slothing on the sofa and watching a movie with a bowl of popcorn. And of course just to be ironic (and annoying) I will be on the other side of him demanding that we get up and dance like lunatics.

Happy Friday all. 


Wednesday 29 May 2013

RING AROUND THE PLAGUE


My sister remarked the other day, as I warbled a classic nursery rhyme in front of our respective kids (at the time they were fighting over who had what and were not at all bothered by my feeble attempt at entertainment) that a lot of the classic nursery rhymes and cartoons are pretty macabre, if not flat out inappropriate for young minds with a propensity for testosterone surges (!). Not only that, but most of the time, we sing these songs and it doesn’t even dawn on us to what the heck we’re singing about.

Case in point, 'Ring-A-Round-The Rosy.' How many of you have sung that little ditty thinking it is a sweet little song where the kids all hold hands and fall in a heap on the ground? What is it really about, you ask (for those of you not in the know)? A sweet little thing called the Bubonic Plague that swept through Europe and claimed millions of victims in a horrifyingly gruesome manner. The opening line, ‘ring-around-a-rosy’ represents the skin lesion that had a reddish ring around it letting you know you were the lucky one to get this death sentence; ‘pocket full of posies’ stood for the fact that doctors and the like used to carry around flowers/herbs they (uselessly) held in front of their noses in hopes of not catching the disease, and the final line, ‘ashes, ashes, we all fall down,’ symbolizes death. Yep, a real uplifting little pop song to sing to the young ones about the positivity of life. Amazing how it became a nursery rhyme in the first place. 

But of course it doesn’t stop there in terms of (ahem) positive messages when it comes to our nursery rhymes. In the song, ‘London Bridges’ the bridge is clearly in need of some serious repair and is eternally falling down, and ‘Rock-a-bye-baby’ is downright twisted in that it is a lullaby where the baby’s cradle is up in a tree (that was not a woman’s decision, I assure you!), and when the cradle rocks, the tree branch breaks and the baby goes hurdling towards the ground. Most parents have a heart attack when their kid rolls off the changing table, can you imagine rejoicing in song about a baby falling out of a two-story tree? The origin of the song is contentious (the historians can’t make up their mind as to who came up with this gem and why) but let’s be frank, those 17th century folk were into some dark stuff.

Then there are the cartoons that many of us grew up on that now upon viewing, one realizes that we were not only watching some violent stuff, but downright racist (see, it’s not only this generation that spews out violence and inappropriate content on television). Take two of my favorites: Tom & Jerry and Roadrunner. For starters, both cartoons were pretty much a blood bath from the word go; in fact that entire premise of both shows was the destruction (or attempted destruction) of the principles involved. Wylie Coyote tried tirelessly to do away with the roadrunner using anything from dynamite to hurling anvils to throwing him off a cliff (never succeeding of course), and Tom and Jerry, whilst showing occasional spates of love, tortured each other to the point of making Jack Bauer look like a choirboy. And yet, we loved it and thought nothing of it at the time - aside from where do I get a bat like Tom's so I can pound my sister on the head when she's annoying me? Not to mention the overt racism on T and J thanks in part to its origins springing out of the close-minded/backward 1950's with many characters in blackface, or the character of ‘Mammy two shoes’ the poor and abusive black matron with a rodent problem. And yes, this was a kid's program.

Okay, perhaps a little roadrunner is harmless in the long run, but it does give you pause the next time you sing to your child about the plague, doesn’t it? I’m thinking the King and I will stick to songs about wheels on buses and spiders and stars in the sky. It will make for a much easier and less exhausting explanation when he starts to question what we're singing about (although the spider does die at the end as we wash the 'spider out', so maybe it's back to the drawing board!)


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