Hold on to Your Meatball

As you are aware by now, we sing to the boys each night before bed.  For eleven years, On Top of Spaghetti has been a part of our repertoire.  Upon reaching the line, "then early next summer, it grew into a tree, and grew lovely meatballs for ... and me," it has been my habit to include the names of all people present in the room at the time.  This simply will not do.  Each successive boy, apparently having the same internal programming, will stop the song to recite the names of all missing parties.  Obviously, my old age has caused my memory to fail and the task of including all family members, present or not, is beyond my mental capacity.  Occasionally, a random friend or animal is tossed in for good measure.  It makes no difference whether I concede and pause or rail against it and plow ahead at an increase speed...the missing people are always accounted for.

On this particular evening, I thought I had finally come up with a solution.  When I reached the key point in the song, instead of listing individual names, I sang, "...and grew lovely meatballs for the Jones family and me."  The peanut gallery was silent.  What do you know about that?

As I neared the end of the song, a small voice sailed neatly over the top of the lyrics.

"And, and the Moline family," he said.

Clever little bugger.  I had been completely fooled.  The preceding silence was not due to a clever solution on my part.  It was a result of the fact that Logan doesn't know many last names, apart from our own, and it took him a moment to remember and pick out his favorite one.

- 2 February 2012