The Girl’s Got...What?

 
They say Disney, we say The Jesus Lizard. They say Sesame Street, we say The Melvins. And on and on it goes -- the battle over music in the car.

Like a couple of old women, the girls yell for us to “turn it down” and to “please play the Lonely Goat Herder song,” -- anything but the electric guitar-driven music we so, so enjoy.

But every once in a while, they surprise us.

For a while there, we convinced Elizabeth that the Cookie Monster was the lead singer of Mastadon. “Hey Lizzy -- who’s that?” we’d ask. “It’s the Cookie Monster!” she’d say. Her happiness only made us feel a teensy-bit guilty about our heavy metal lie.

And now Samantha is demonstrating a fondness for AC/DC’s “The Girl’s Got Rhythm” from their album Highway to Hell (yes!). Specifically, the chorus that goes:

The girl’s got rhythm (girl’s got rhythm)
The girl’s got rhythm (girl’s got rhythm)
She’s got the back seat rhythm (back seat rhythm)
The girl’s got rhythm

(click the play button, below, to listen -- or click here):


There sat little 3-year old Samantha -- in a back seat of her own, no less -- sucking her thumb, holding her Baby Doll, and singing “the girl’s got rhythm...” She listened to the first refrain and then chimed in during the second, singing the parts in parentheses. Only, instead of “rhythm”, she sang “ribbon”.

The girl’s got rhythm (girl’s got a RIBBON...)

Of course. Clearly this wasn’t a song about the sexual escapades of a rocker and his hottie in the back seat of his car. No, the girl in the song was probably a girl much like Samantha, a girl sitting in the back seat of her parent's car, playing with a ribbon (a shiny, pink one.) Perhaps, too, this girl dropped her Cheerios on the floor and was chastised by her older sister for singing the wrong lyrics.

“It’s not ribbon -- it’s rhythm.” Elizabeth corrected the other day when the song came on again.

“No it’s not! It’s ribbon.” Samantha insisted.

“No, it’s rhythm,” Elizabeth said in a calm, cool HAL-like voice.

Most of the time we enjoy the role Elizabeth often assumes of correcting and guiding her younger sister. It’s a role we’ve encouraged her to embrace in an ill-fated attempt to help Elizabeth obey the rules. (If she only knew...)

But this time I hope Samantha doesn’t believe her big sister. Right or wrong, I hope she continues to sing about the girl with the ribbon -- a girl like herself, stuck in heavy traffic on our daily commute otherwise known as the Highway to Hell.

Please join me in raising our sippy cups to AC/DC. Cheers!