This morning I heard myself humming “It’s a Lovely Eleven Morning.”
Good grief–why *that* song?
The Sesame-Street cartoon featured a shepherdess a la Marie Antoinette–long-gowned, wasp-waisted, and swoony–you laugh when she ends up by tumbling into a pigpen.
She moved and talked and sang like the kind of woman no tomboy wants to grow up to be. I used to make my friends laugh and roll on the grass with my scabby-kneed imitation of a fictional woman I called “The Dainty Lady.”
“A mouse, eeee! Oh, teddible, teddible. Oh Jeeves, help me climb up on this antique table. Oh Jeeves, bring me my smelling salts–no, not those, the ones in the silver bottle…..”
When my daughter Mickey first heard the Eleven song, she turned from the TV and said, “Look, Mummy, she acts like the Dainty Lady.”
So, for the record, I’m not a Dainty Lady. I might be singing her song, but she’s not me. I’ve rarely been stopped by scary or dirty or hard from going the hundreds of places I wanted to go.
Today, I feel like singing her silly song.
And if I fall into a pigpen, feel free to laugh, because I will.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Frank Paynter // Nov 6, 2003 at 8:42 pm
Wanna hear a dirty joke?
Okay.
Pig fell in the mud.
2 Betsy Devine // Nov 7, 2003 at 12:04 pm
And a dirtier one? Ten pigs fell in the mud right next to your pig…. ;-)
3 fp // Nov 7, 2003 at 1:11 pm
Now, those pigs are DIRTY! And so’s your joke.
Here’s a conundrum… can a person be both a grumpy old coot with a surly affect given to ad hominem critiques, and still be a nice enough guy?
4 Betsy Devine // Nov 7, 2003 at 3:10 pm
Of course you can! Only very special people can manage it, but some of my favorites are indeed special enough. ;-)