turns out there’s been plenty of songs my parents were already feeding me with. I may have forgotten the words and may not be entirely on the ball if it comes to the rhythm, but as I keep on scratching my bald little head, I’m becoming to pick up the tunes that I thought I lost already.

of course the first songs were sung to me by my mammy. as I was still quite deranged in the first hours in the hospital, I couldn’t really focus on listening to her lullabies, but as soon as we hit my new home and she started molesting me with the incy wincy spider, there was no coming back. daddy kept on helping her, but apparently he didn’t know about the little spider’s adventures, so instead of repeating the song that my mam kept on singing every so often, dad chose something completely different and here and then he used to sing the song about the lion sleeping in the jungle tonight. since he was always a bit of completionist, he had to drag the song over and over from its very beginning. so before the actual words started flowing from his mouth, he was always starting right into my ears with the part that he thought was originally there: “nants ingonyama bagithi baba, sithi uhm ingonyama”. then he was switching to more understandable: “wee heeheehee weeoh aweem away, wee heeheehee weeoh aweem away”. I’m really not sure how I was able to survive this onslaught.

by the way at some stage I begun to wonder what the hell is wrong with my parents in the first place. I understand that they may have very limited capacity and the sounds floating in their heads may not be perfectly tuned, but why did you ever think that it may be actually a good idea to keep on singing the same songs over and over? how many times incy wincy spider could be washed by the rain without realising that his efforts are pointless and at some stage he should give up climbing up the spout? I would understand it much faster even if I don’t even know yet how to climb!

or the other one. go to sleep my seamus, go to sleep my child. seriously? why should I be rushed into something I don’t want to do at all? I really find it slightly offensive when she sings that it’s the time for all the good boys and girls to go to sleep. yhm-yhm, excuse me! just because I have some other plans for the evening, it doesn’t necesserily mean that I’m straight up bad, doesn’t it? I really don’t like the assumptions lines mommy draws here. I know who I am and I know how good I am, so please don’t expect me to believe that the same song I keep on hearing every night will change my mind!

it didn’t take long before I started using my loud voice in retaliation. after all I heard mommy saying to dad at multiple occasions “we’re going to have a very loud baby”, so as a testament to her will I had to use all my wits to bring my singing voice to life. and would you believe if I were to tell you that my dad recorded it the moment he heard it for the first time? check this one out!