My one man stroller band

I went for a run with Toby yesterday and about 2 minutes in he got bored and wanted to sing songs. “Old Donald! Old Donald and FARM!!” he requested. There I was in the cold, running up a hill, pushing a stroller with child and trying to sing Old MacDonald. It wasn’t pretty. Toby picked up on this immediately, and before I’d gotten to the horrendous duo of gasping for air while making “mooing” sounds, he had politely requested that I stop.

“No, mommy. NO singing. TOBY sing!”

So I took him up on his (surprisingly polite) offer.

I didn’t know that Toby knew all the words to “Old Donald”. I also didn’t know that he could sing. But apparently he does. And he can. (Sort of.)

At first it he started off timidly and I wasn’t totally sure that he was actually trying to SING the words. Off key doesn’t REALLY do it justice; that would imply that he was actually trying to follow a melody. “Old Donald…had FARM and thentherewasthe COOOOOOOOW and eeeiiiieeeeiii MOOOOOO and olddonaldandafarmhada DUUUUCK and eieieieieieoooooQUACK….olddonaldanda FARM and thentherewasthe COOOOOOW and MOOOOOO” As his confidence grew he got louder and LOUDER and LOUDER with it. And then he started banging his feet. Because no atonic song is complete without an uncoordinated syncopated beat.

It was a cross between Marilyn Manson and the singing of psalms at church, but give him a beret and a microphone at some beatnik poetry café and he probably would have had a great act. Thank goodness I live in the middle of nowhere. I’m not so sure I could have lasted too long on the street of Toronto with my one-man stroller band. But I have to give him this much - -it was WAY more entertaining than my iPod ever is…