"Psalty"

image via

I still was listening to LPs as a kid.  There wasn't a large selection for me to choose from (that interested me, anyway--I wasn't one much for Dionne Warwick or Roger Whittaker), so there were a select few we kept in constant rotation. Chief among these was the Psalty series, which followed the adventures of a "big... blue... singing... songbook!"  While an anthropomorphized hymnal might not seem like the most appealing--or marketable--of children's characters, Psalty and his retinue of spunky children sang a lot of catchy tunes and it was always fun to sing along.

I never knew until recently that there were videos to go with the audio of the Kids' Praise albums-- and it's a darn good thing, too.  Psalty appears as a man in gold facepaint with blue Bob Ross-like facial hair, and Charity Churchmouse has flesh-colored prosthetic Dumbo ears and a '50s-style circle skirt and looks like she just ducked out of a low-rent Furry Convention. 

The album featuring Charity had one profoundly scary moment for me, when she has a nightmare that the conman Risky Rat is trying to lure her into signing a "con-trap"--I mean "contract," and make her his "slave"--er, that is--his "star."  Without being able to see Risky Rat, I was able to conjure up an image of him that was truly terrifying: a kind of cross between Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective and Warren T. Rat from An American Tail, with a little Jenner from The Secret of NIMH thrown in. 

Still, nothing would have been quite as scary as the way Risky Rat is depicted in the video Psalty's Salvation Celebration, in which the whiskers-twirling villain actually tries to prevent children from saving their immortal souls (!!!). 

Lesson learned:
Always take a talent agent's promises with a grain of Psalt.

Kid's Praise! 4: Singsational Servants.  Perf. Ernie Rettino.  Maranatha Music, 1984.

Watch Kids' Praise 4 on YouTube here (Risky Rat appears around 32:00).
Psalty Kid's Praise! 4 Singsational Servants

"Pecos Bill"

image via

Where I live, it's been over 100°F lately, and as I walk across parking lots in oven-like conditions, seeing the horizon line itself writhe with the heat, I've found myself thinking of "Pecos Bill."

Then, once I started thinking about it, I found I couldn't stop.  I was trying to decide if all my memories of the cartoon could possibly be real, or if I'd embellished them in my nightmares.  Did it truly feature interspecies suckling, à la Romulus and Remus? Was there actually a scene where the hero rides a cyclone, rolls a cigarette on his tongue, and lights it with a lightning bolt?  Did he really take potshots at Indians donning warpaint until he'd created the Painted Desert?  And were Roy Rogers and Trigger somehow involved?

So I watched it again to find out.

The cartoon starts with Bill as a toddler heading west with his family, until the wagon hits a bump and baby Bill goes flying out and lands in the mud.  Since he's one of 16 children, nobody notices or cares.  (As a member of a large family myself--my name was often confused with a brother's, or another brother's, or a sister's, or, more often, the dog's--this was a particular childhood fear of mine realized.)

He's then raised by coyotes (a childhood dream of mine realized, though yanking a coyote pup off its mother's teat to feed was perhaps a bit too visceral for me).

One day, young Bill sees a young colt near death and being attacked by buzzards.  Bill jumps into the fray and pummels the birds so hard their feathers fly off.  In the aftermath, when Bill and the colt gaze at each other through matching blackened eyes, it is, as the narrator says, "the beginning of a bee-yoo-tiful friendship."  They seal the deal with an Eskimo kiss.

In fact, "Pecos Bill" is a love story in the same vein as Passion In The Desert.  Sure, later on Bill enters a more conventional romantic relationship with Slue-Foot Sue, but his partner for life is surely Widowmaker, his horse.  They laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike-- well, yodel, anyway.  When Bill begins to woo Sue, we see Widowmaker looking on and weeping.  Then when Bill and Sue decide to get married, Sue wants two things: a bustle and a chance to ride Widowmaker.  In a jealous rage, Widowmaker bucks so hard that Sue's bustle bounces off his hide and sends her sailing off "like a Roman candle."  (The fact that a rootin'-tootin' catfish-ridin' cowgirl like Sue is undone by such a frivolous a symbol of womanly vanity seems uncharacteristic, but oh well.)

Bill tries to lasso Sue to bring her back down, but Widowmaker sabotages the attempt, and Sue winds up landing on the moon.  Bill goes back to living with the coyotes, and he and Widowmaker live out their days together.

Lesson learned:
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him like your girlfriend.


"Pecos Bill."  Melody Time.  Perf. Roy Rogers, Bob Nolan.  Disney, 1948.
Melody Time (Disney Gold Classic Collection)

"Fuzzy Bee and Friends"

A Smother Goose literature review

First off, the title is misleading (beyond the fact that you'll need to avoid calling it "Busy Bee" by mistake).  Like Godot, Fuzzy Bee never actually appears.  His likeness graces the cover but is nowhere to be found inside.

Anyway, Fuzzy Bee has a posse.  It seems implausible that a bee would have allies as diverse as a snail or a worm--given that it spends most of its time in a hive full of other bees--so if your child is well-versed in apiology, he or she might have some questions about this.  (For the less informed child, you might also wish to explain that not every part of a bee is "fuzzy.")

An omniscient narrator introduces each of Fuzzy Bee's friends in turn, alternately ridiculing them ("Keep moving snail, you're really slow") or making spurious claims about their temperament ("This dragonfly is really tame").  The last page contains the soliloquy of a megalomaniac butterfly fishing for validation: "Oh me, Oh my!  I wonder why / I'm such a splendid butterfly!"

Fuzzy Bee is also a text mired in scandal; two characters have been excised from the most recent version without explanation.  Rumors that this move was spurred by an affair between Sally Spider and Mr. Fly are still mere allegations at this point, however.

Then there's Squishy Turtle and Friends which, like a Whit Stillman film, continues the thematic elements of Fuzzy Bee while introducing a new cast of characters.  Oddly, the narrator seems to be sadly misinformed about blue whales, suggesting that they could potentially live in a freshwater lake given that it's large enough, and that they eat "little fish with shiny scales."  To divert the savvy reader from questioning the veracity of these claims, the narrator threatens you with a crab who "knows / just how to pinch your tiny toes," and then ends the tale with the threatening spectre of a "hungry shark" (see above).

Lesson learned:
In truth, blue whales eat only krill / (and "squishy" turtle means roadkill)

Priddy, Roger.  Fuzzy Bee and Friends.  New York: St. Martin's (Priddy Books), 2003.
Fuzzy Bee and Squishy Turtle Pack

Lies Your Parents Told You

image via

Whenever April Fool's Day rolls around, I think about a particularly gullible relative of mine who believed that spaghetti grew on trees.  He had been duped by a 1957 spoof broadcast of a "Spaghetti Harvest" and for years believed in the existence of Swiss spaghetti orchards.

I've always thought April Fool's Day was pretty lame, and now with the advent of social media, it's close to unbearable ("ZOMG Im pregnant!" "Lulz, j/k!").  And then I realized that if you're a parent, you get to perform April Fool's Day-style trickery all year round.  A kid is going to learn about the world through his parents ("This is a doggie.  We pet the doggie verrry gently."  "That is a lion.  We back away from the lion verrry slowly."), and so there's a certain trust in place there, and parents have always used this to their advantage.  They will tell you that if you make that face again it will freeze that way, or if you swallow a watermelon seed, a vine will grow in your stomach, or that if you suck your thumb again, a tailor will materialize and cut it off.

The idea behind most of these parent-isms is that the ends justify the means.  You don't want your kid making that face, or sucking his thumb, or whatever, and saying "watermelon seeds aren't nutritive and could present a potential choking hazard" is less tangible an idea than the image of growing a watermelon vine in one's gut.  Of course, the tricky part is when the kid stops believing you-- he tried it, and his face won't freeze after all-- or, conversely, when he won't stop believing (with apologies to Journey), and therefore refuses to eat noodles for fear of growing an internal spaghetti forest.

Parents also tell kids lies just because it's fun for them sometimes, with the same motivation, I imagine, that compels your older relatives and clueless coworkers to send you email forwards with animated gifs that tell lame, dubiously inspiring stories and then promise at the end that if you don't forward it to fifty other people you'll die, possibly from a watermelon seed.  

Some of the lies even seem beneficial-- the Tooth Fairy, for example, is a useful tool to help kids get over the fear that's a natural result when parts of your body suddenly start falling off, leaving gaping, bloody holes in your face.  The idea that a mythical being will visit you and leave you money when this happens seems like a pretty fair trade, then (accounting for inflation, of course-- if the Tooth Fairy leaves you a quarter but gave that girl in your math class a ten-spot, that's pretty cold comfort).

As I began reading parenting manuals, I wondered what they might have to say about the acceptability of parental white lies.  So far, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and his ilk haven't made an appearance, but I did come across a particularly unexpected bit of advice in that venerated staple What to Expect the First Year.  In describing how to help your child "reach his or her maximum potential," it suggests: "[try] talking about people you see ('That lady is very old,' 'That man has to ride around in a chair because he has a boo-boo on his leg,' 'Those children are going to school')" (384).

So... I'm supposed to foster his genius by teaching him to talk about the handicapped and the elderly like they're not there?

Or maybe the lesson is to construct plausible fictions aloud about everyone you see around you, like you're taking an oral exam for a freshman creative writing class. ("That girl's pants are too tight because she eats her feelings," "That man is driving that car because he's insecure about his masculinity," "That woman is using coupons and paying with a personal check because she doesn't realize that some of us have places to be right now.")

While not exactly a lie, the statement that a stranger you see who uses a wheelchair "has to ride around in a chair because he has a boo-boo on his leg" is obtuse at best.  This strikes me as one of the more pernicious and ignorant "tales for children" that I've come across yet.

Lesson learned: 
...And stop cracking your knuckles; it will give you arthritis!


Murkoff, Heidi, Arlene Eisenberg, and Sandee E. Hathaway.  What to Expect the First Year.  New York: Workman, 2009.

"The Brave Little Toaster"

image via

Fear: An Imaginary Portrait of the Creative Team Behind The Brave Little Toaster

Visionary #1: You know what I've always wanted to do?  Make a film that really forces an encounter with the shadow archetype in a Jungian sense--something that so terrifying that it could provoke an increased fear response, perhaps even triggering a phobia, outside the normative ontogenetic parade.

Visionary #2: Oh, sure.  So, a Disney children's film, then?

V1: Of course.  But kids are so jaded these days--what's left that would scare them?

V2: How about a horribly deformed toy? 

V1: That's a good start.  For maximum horror impact, I'm thinking a creepy doll-- no, just its head!  And it has a missing eye!  And the body of a mechanical spider!  And it's alive!

V2: We could call it "Spider Baby!"

V1: Ah, no, that's no good; toys come to life has been done before.  We need something even more uncanny.  How about household appliances come to life?

V2: The marketing team won't like that.  What kind of character would they use to promote the movie, a desk lamp?

V1: It's so crazy, it just might work!  Plus, can you imagine the retail opportunities?  Kids begging their parents to buy them vacuum cleaners, refusing to go to sleep unless they can cuddle their clock radios, playing in the bath with their toasters...

V2: Well, maybe not that last one.  So what else are kids afraid of?  Lightning?

V1: Done!  Let's fry a protagonist with it.

V2: How about fear of death?

V1: Yes!  I'll add in some near-misses with drowning, quicksand, vivisection, and then for the grand finale... a car crusher!

V2: Gosh, that's a little drastic, isn't it?

V1: Not at all!  Here, I'll have a car go into the crusher on purpose, just to show it's no biggie.  Automotive suicide!  Now there's a phobia I bet they haven't included in the DSM yet.  It's still lacking something though, something universally terrifying, something so sinister their sheets won't be dry for weeks...

V2: Um... an evil clown?

V1: Perfect!

Lesson learned:
"Run."

The Brave Little Toaster.  Dir. Jerry Rees.  Perf. Deanna Oliver, Jon Lovitz, Tim Stack.  Hyperion, 1987.
 
The Brave Little Toaster

Tinny tune adventures

image via

One of the things I've discovered as a parent is that kids' stuff tends to play music--and I use that term loosely.  Whether it's a mutant stuffed animal or an infant swing, you can bet that if you turn a knob, squeeze it, jiggle its foot, or whatever, it's going to have the capacity to play a tinny MIDI tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It" or "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" ad infinitum, and you're soon going to start hearing these ditties on a loop in your sleep, maybe even accompanied by dreams that you're driving an ice cream truck... to Hell. 

I feel like the makers of these toys are perhaps conducting some kind of covert psychological testing on new parents--something like the Stanford Prison Experiment, where the prisoner-parents cease to remember who they are or why they're there, knowing only that they are hearing "It's a Small World After All" for the five hundredth time and maybe even starting to think they like it.  It seems the folks over at Sterling Cooper Fisher Price have become masters of the earworm, selecting only songs more insidiously catchy than "Chili's Baby Back Ribs" and more inane than "MacArthur Park."  And while I've already explored the beautiful dark twisted fantasy that is "Rock-a-Bye Baby," I'd be remiss not to mention a few other favorite toddler tunes that have some pretty messed-up messages.

"Alouette"--All about plucking the feathers off a poor lark (Big Bird?), body part by body part.  Second only to "Baby Bumblebee" as the theme song of animal torture aficionados and future serial killers.

"Oh My Darling Clementine"--A miner's girlfriend tragically drowns so he consoles himself by getting busy with her little sister instead.  With its incestuous overtones, a favorite folksong in West Virginia.

"Hush, Little Baby"--Don't say a word.  Because I'm going to buy you a series of inappropriate and ill-thought-out gifts, and when they all inevitably break, or die, I'll throw more money at the problem in hopes that you'll love me.  The ballad of the absentee father?

Lesson learned:
Cheer up!  At least there are "cigarette trees" to look forward to in "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," so it's not all bad.  (Well, until you're "buggered sore," that is...)

100 Singalong Songs for Kids

"Little Boy Blue"

image via

Some childhood trauma seems to be nearly universal if you came of age at a certain time--what child of the Eighties didn't have nightmares about wheelies?--but other sources of fear are unique to the individual.  I'm not sure anyone else on the planet shared my horror at the Study in the board game "Clue," for example.  But I have been surprised at how many people remember--and not with fondness--the Uncle Arthur stories.

I haven't ever encountered anyone else who had this particular experience, but for some reason, the "Little Boy Blue" poem I knew growing up didn't have anything to do with blowing horns or cows in the corn.  I remember asking other children at school if they knew "the real version" and being stared at as if I had lobsters crawling out of my ears.  The version I knew--by Eugene Field--was a bit more bleak than the well-known nursery rhyme.  It begins:

The little toy dog is covered with dust,
   But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
   And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
   And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
   Kissed them and put them there.

The poem confirmed my belief in the emotional lives of toys, and upped the stakes a bit, because not only could they die, but you could die as well!  The phrasing too of the child's death-- "And, as he was dreaming, an angel song / Awakened our Little Boy Blue," was eerily similar to the conclusion of "Jesus Understood," and suggested the possibility that not only could Jesus kidnap and murder you, but there were angelic henchpersons who could do the deed as well.  I imagined them toting around harp-cases with guns in them, like heavenly old-time gangsters.


Lesson learned:
Always make provisions for your stuffed animals in your will.

Field, Eugene.  "Little Boy Blue."  1888.

101 Famous Poems