The Gifts Parents Give

This appeared April 2, 2006

Be careful what you do, parents. What you inflict upon your children at a tender age will come back to, if not haunt them, then at least visit them unexpectedly the rest of their lives.
I'll give you an example:
My friend Patrick loves to share stories of his family, and recently sent one concerning his maternal grandfather, who it seems was a bit of a showman. As Patrick wrote in the story, every now and then his grandfather would enlist younger brother Michael to entertain at a party. They would dress in top hats and canes and perform the old standard "Me and My Shadow."
As a helpful reference to those who are strangers to the song, Patrick included a few sample lyrics. As for me, I didn't need them any more than a Philadelphia football fan needs to know that the "L" comes after the "G." My eyes hadn't finished passing over the "My" in the song title before the tune started playing in my head.
"Me and my shadow/ Strolling down the avenue/ Me and my shadow/ Not a soul to tell or troubles to."
To this day, I do not remember ever hearing that song on the radio. But my father sang it to my sisters and me perhaps every night while we were falling asleep when we were between the ages of 3 and 10. Every night.
"And when it's 12 o'clock/ We climb the stairs/ We never knock/ 'Cause nobody's there."
You could kill me tomorrow, cut my flesh into chicken nugget-sized pieces, grind them into fertilizer, strew it across a grove of apple trees, harvest the fruit, feed them to pigs, teach one to talk, put the pig on a stage, start up the music, and the pig would, without blinking, belt out, "Strolling down the av-en-ue!"
You can believe me or not.
I don't know what caused my father to choose that particular song to lullaby us with. It was written by Broadway impresario Billy Rose in 1927, around the time my father was born. He probably heard it on the radio when he was growing up.
Just as you, Mr. and Ms. Child-Of-The-1960s, probably put your children to bed with your own rendition of Crosby, Stills and Nash's "Our House." And because of that, your young Ashleys and Tylers are doomed to someday be driving along a strange road with their new boss, see a "For Sale" sign off to the right, and auto-reflexively start singing, "With two cats in the yard ... "
This infliction of popular culture upon our youth reached a high point for me when I visited friends in Brooklyn. Sondra and Ed were getting their 3-year-old son Mario ready to go to the park, stuffing him into his snowsuit and strapping him into his stroller. "One land, one king!" Ed shouted. "One land, one king!" Mario returned.
"It's a game they play," Sondra explained. "Movie lines. That's from 'Excalibur' - you know, the one about King Arthur."
"Oh," I smiled.
Then Ed said, "Forget it Jake, it's 'Chinatown!'"
As Mario responded in kind, I thought, "My God. This boy is going to grow up thinking one of the most chilling lines in movie history means it's time to go to the park and have fun."
This madness must end.