Goofy Kid Songs

So I’ve got these 3 kids, and they’re all pretty cool. Their favorite movie is Yellow Submarine, and I couldn’t be prouder. Of course they’ll never be allowed to read the filth that spews forth from my keyboard.

So every night at bedtime, they get sung to. Generally they get a mix of The Beatles, Warren Zevon, sometimes some old Pink Floyd or Springsteen, and of course the standard kid song fare.

But ’round about the time my second son was two, I saw a PBS documentary about the life of Fred Rogers, better known simply as Mr. Rogers. I guess I really had absolutely nothing better to do that day. Anyway, they showed a really old clip of his show, back when he was on a local station somewhere and never actually appeared on-screen, just working as puppeteer and doing the voices. On it he sang a distorted version of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” that went like this:

Propel, propel, propel your craft
Over liquid solution
Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically
Existence is but an illusion

Well, I thought that was pretty awesome, and in no time added it to the kids bedtime song repertoire. I’d sing a couple normal verses of “Row Your Boat”, then one last verse the Mr. Rogers way. Eventually, my two-year-old learned to sing it along with me.

But I’m not one to be outclevered by Mr. Rogers, so I came up with this:

The microscopic arachnid ascended the drainage device
Liquid precipitation flushed the arachnid from the pipes
Solar radiation caused evaporation
And the microscopic arachnid repeated his ascension

And their current favorite (though not really a song per se)…

This little piggy got slaughtered
This little piggy survived
This little piggy ate cow flesh
This little piggy starved and died
And this little piggy peed all over himself

And let me tell you, that’s a laugh riot when you’re five years old. Or when you’re a really immature 36-year-old.