Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The man in black

My boys LOVE "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash! They heard it about two weeks ago when we were hanging out with my MOMS Club friends at the new, stand-alone Starbucks in town. Of course Starbucks doesn't have enough seats for a group, so we found some seats for the kids and stood around talking, drinking our snazzy coffee drinks. I didn't even notice the music -- too busy gabbing, I'm sure -- but afterward Son2 was singing, "it burns, burns, burns" and told me he'd heard it at Starbucks. I don't know much Johnny Cash, but who else could it be but the man in black??

Son2 is a whistling fiend nowadays. Last week he taught himself to whistle while breathing in as well as the more typical whistling while blowing out. This means that he can whistle at tempo every note in whatever Harry Potter soundtrack piece is in his mind at the moment, without a pause to breathe -- at least for a little while. It's kind of amazing when you realize what he's doing.

All this to say, I've heard Son2 whistle a fragment of this Johnny Cash song nearly as much this week as Harry Potter music... but the boys don't know the song very well, having only heard it once.

All that changed about five minutes ago when they heard "Ring of Fire (single version)" from Johnny Cash's Legend: The Ultimate Box Set (played from my laptop's iTunes wirelessly to the stereo, thanks to dear husband's setup). What happened was that last night after the kids were in bed I was looking for music to play from my dear husband's shared iTunes list. I realized dear husband had this song and in fact the whole box set, and I begged to have it on my laptop's iTunes so I could play it for the kids (yeah, for the kids, that's right, not for me...). Fast forward to tonight. The boys are busy watching the lava lamp in the darkened dining room (physics, fluid motion, all that science stuff in one ever-changing blue and green object...). Suddenly they sit up straight, look at each other, say, "it's that song!" and start singing along. I let the song repeat a few times and by the third time they were singing along with most of the song.

So... I let iTunes continue on to play more of the box set. Too fun.

3 comments:

Remudamom said...

Too cute, I bet I say "stop whistling in the house" 100 times a day. You have more patience than me!

Melessa Gregg said...

My Dad is a whistler. My DD seems to have inherited his talent. I wish I had. It's funny that I read this while listening to "I Still Miss Someone" on my iPod.

Barbara said...

Oh, I definitely say, "Stop whistling!" about a zillion times a day... but sometimes I don't :)

Both my dad and my husband's dad can whistle, as can dear husband. I remember my dad whistling lots when we were driving places. That was a lonnnnnng time ago, 'cause my memory seems to include Dad at the wheel of a VW bus, and I thought that was the car I'd only heard about and didn't actually remember. Hmmm.

So, whistling is back in my life, yes!