Popular. Music.

Last week I was trumped by my four year old daughter in popular music awareness.
She had been singing something at the dinner table that Melissa and I had a hard time understanding, but finally got out something about "Can't put a RING on it" and "All the Single Ladies!"
It is disconcerting to hear your daughter, who was a toddler in your memory just about 5 minutes ago, singing anything at all about Single Ladies. Especially at the dinner table.
Fortunately both of these lyric fragments were googlable, and returned references to the song stylings of Beyonce. When we asked her, she divulged that it came from a CD at school called Kidz Bop, the website for which described said remakes as cleaned-up songs re-sung by kids (FUBU?). Of course I knew OF Beyonce Knowles, but was completely unaware of this song, which turns out to be years old and already parodied on SNL. And she also likes to sing this Train song too called Soul Sister, but I'm not all that ashamed that I didn't know this one.

I write as an embarrassed father. Already old, unhip and hopelessly behind the times, and could you please turn that crap down already? I can't hear myself think.
C'mon, really? I'm already behind at four? I really didn't see this coming. And I'm starting to really question my assumption that someday she will think my old Zeppelin, Beatles and Dylan are really great. Or really Easy Listening.
Well, Wheel of Fortune is over, so there's nothing left but to pop my dentures out and hit the hay. Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.

Church

Olivia has been going to Sunday School fairly regularly now, as freedom from illness or travel has allowed her a month or so of Sundays in her own bed and schedule.
She really seems to like the singing and class experience of Sunday School, and I've gotten to sit in with the class a couple times to verify that she is very verbally involved and interested.
This and her great-grandmother's funeral a few months ago lead to lots of interesting statements and questions. About God and heaven and what we do with peoples' bodies when they die and where their spirits go. And how did David kill Goliath with a little rock and what is a sling anyway? Today she told me that Oma was not crying for Great Grandma any more because she is up in heaven. And I told her that was true and that she could ask Oma about that anytime she wants to; talk to her about how she feels and what Great Grandma means to her. Told her that Oma would be be happy to talk about that anytime.
She sat on my lap for the sermon in church today, and defied my warning that Pastor Mark is going to talk for a while now and that he might say some things that she won't understand. She would regularly lean back and whisper in my ear things like "that means that Jesus is trapping people in a net" as Mark was discussing aspects of Matthew's verses of James and John leaving Zebedee and their nets to join Jesus on the shores of Galilee. Right she was.