Rebel Without the Caws

Clap, clap, clap your hands, clap your hands together.

Clap, clap, clap your hands, clap your hands together.

La la la la la la la, la la la la la la.

La la la la la la la, la la la la la.

So begins Clap, Clap, Clap, and so begins the Toddler’s Saturday morning music class, a mechanical wave of hands and annoying songs.

But where have all the Daddies gone? Slowly they’ve been disappearing. The Moms still dutifully show up with their little ones for the 9 AM class. But week by week, the Dad population has thinned. What has caused the decline?

The answer, I think, can be traced back in time to the Elementaryazoic Period in the development of the male species. It was during this stage of our lives that we spent a considerable amount of our time in classrooms. Most of that time was spent with our homeroom teacher but there were two breaks in that schedule, one of which was for gym class and the other of which was for music class.

For most boys, gym class, with the exception of recess, was the best time of the day. You got to run around like animals and throw balls at each other. What was there not to like about it? If you have an answer to that, odds are that you were not a boy.

Music class was everything that gym class wasn’t. A dreadful bore, it was. You felt like you were trapped in a birdcage for an hour. And the teacher forced you to do things that boys just didn’t do, at least in public, like dancing and singing and, worst of all, hand holding.

One would think that as the male species evolved and grew, it would have become more comfortable in its own skin. But the experience of toddler music class has demonstrated that not to be the case. If anything, Daddies are even less mature than their kids.

The Daddy drop-our rate in The Toddler’s music class is accelerating at an alarming rate, and it’s attributable to the class making them feel somewhat, well, less than manly. If real men don’t eat quiche, they certainly don’t dance around in a circle, holding hands and waving colorful scarves.

About three-quarters of the way through the class, the teacher plays a listening activity for the one and two year olds. In her whisper of a voice, she asks, “What sound is that?” When the one and two year olds yell “Crow!” it signals the lead-in for the song Billy McGee.

There were three crows sat on a tree, sing Billy McGee, McGaw.

There were three crows sat on a tree, sing Billy McGeee, McGaw.

There were three crows sat on a tree, and they are black as they could be,

And they all flapped their wings and cried, “Caw, caw, caw!”

With each “Caw, caw, caw!” the teacher places her hands in her armpits, flaps them like wings and adds the cawing sounds of the crow. Ritualistically, the toddlers and their parents follow her lead in cacophonous cawing, except for me, one of the few remaining Dads. I’ve taken to just watching from the safety of the crow’s nest, in the seats at the back of the room, the rebel without the caws.

Comments

[Shahna]

Here's the skinny on what Mommies think: we think it takes a dedicated dad to sit through music school each Saturday ... and even though we might tease you a bit for feeling emasculated, we think it's pretty great that you care enough to watch the Toddler have fun (even if fun means dancing around wit a colorful scarf on his head). Baa Baaa Ba.