Remind Me Again, Where is it that We All Live?

I was cleaning the kitchen last night while listening to a radio show. As the show came back from break, they played that one chord that everyone can immediately identify as the first note of The Beatles' Hard Days Night.

This single bit of music in a universe of unintelligible talk immediately caught Vanya's attention. He stopped what he was doing, looked toward the source of the music, and prepared himself to jam a little bit if the music was to continue.

He's always been a real big fan of music and animals. The first week he was home with us, he started dancing to the radio. He seemed especially to like the Ramones. But I was a little suspicious that he was noticing something about what music I like, and basing his own opinions on me.

So I did a little experimenting. I pretended to like country music. He didn't. I pretended to dislike songs with lots of drumming. He still liked them. He's a true punk-rocker.

I found the band TV on the Radio a couple of months ago because he starting head-bobbing to one of their songs playing over the closing credits to a movie that was on TV.

The speakers in the kitchen are just crappy little plugins that sit above the stove, occasionally falling into our cooking food.

Anyway, after he picked up that note from Hard Days Night, I wondered how much he would like a different Beatles song. The one I had in mind was really a children's song, after all.

I found it on the ipod and started the track. And to Vanya, it was as if a choir of angels from heaven materialized above the shitty little speakers above the oven. He was at first too blown away to dance. He had to be picked up; he had to see where this beautiful melody came from.

He examined the speakers. He examined the ipod. And he danced with an abandon that self-conscious adults can't possibly know. He shook his arms with excitement, like a TV preacher's parishioner who has just had his cancer cast away by the TV preacher. He joined Ringo Starr, banging drum rhythms on the metal hood over the stove.

When it was over, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny came into the kitchen to see what was so exciting. We played Yellow Submarine again.

And it was just as big a hit.

I know myself well enough to know that hearing Yellow Submarine three times in a row is enough to send me into a wild-man, foaming-at-the-mouth rage, so we stopped listening to the song at that point.

Let me know if you find yourself singing this number to yourself later in the day.