Uke Guy

Way back in August, when filling out paperwork for preschool, one of the forms asked about any parental talents that might be fun for the class to know about. Mrs. theskinnyonbenny considered our talents, and decided that my consistent ability to pull my pants ALL the way up above my butt crack wasn't impressive enough, so she listed me as a ukulele player.

The fact that I just had to look up the spelling of ukulele tells you all you need to know on that front.

They had a music unit scheduled a couple of weeks ago, and asked me to come by and sing. I agreed, and I was immediately karmically rewarded with an ice storm that cancelled the day of school that I was supposed to appear.

But alas, they rescheduled, and today was the morning that I was meant to appear. I procrastinated learning any kid songs until about an hour before my first preschooler gig. I looked up the chords used when playing Stewball and Twinkle Twinkle. They were all ones that I could handle, so I sat in my car in the parking lot at work, ran through them a couple of times, and deemed myself ready.

K wasn't enthusiastic about all of this. In fact, when I dropped him off in the morning, he demanded that I not return for singing. It would have been fine with me to honor his request, but then the teachers would pen me in as a flake. I got there during snack time, and K just pretended that I was a stranger. He came and grabbed my knee when snack was over, but when I made him sit down with his class, he was done with me.

When I would sing, he even covered his ears with his hands and shook his head no.

Little shit.

I was thinking that two songs would be plenty, but I ran through them in about 90 seconds, and all of the teachers and kids just looked up at me expectantly for more. I asked the kids what they wanted to sing, and when they answered, I told them to sing really loud. They sang loud, and I strummed nonsense chords that didn't go with the songs at all. We did this for three or four more songs.

Then, I let them each strum the strings, the teachers made everyone pose for a picture with me, and I screeched out of there like my pants were on fire.