The Wheel Turns

I keep forgetting to post this story.

Cameron's sense of humor is starting to develop along somewhat predictable lines. Over the holidays he was singing many butchered holiday songs. You know, "Jingle Bells, Batman smells" that sort of thing. One of the popular ones started something like this: "Joy to the World, Barney's dead!" When I heard that one I made it known I did not want to hear him singing stuff like that. Jokes are okay, songs about people dying (even the Purple Scourge) are not okay. Presumably he is clever enough to realize that means "Don't sing it around me."

I didn't come down on him too hard - mainly because the whole thing reminded me of something:

It's the mid-70's. I'm around Cameron's age, give or take a year. The family is piled into the trusty sedan for the hour-long drive to "the city" (Oklahoma City, of course) to do some Christmas shopping or go to an orchestra concert or something. We are just underway, eastbound on I-40 - not even to Hydro yet - and I am in the back seat by the right window, singing the latest popular playground ditty. It's a version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in which the outcast of the title is instead a bowl-legged cowboy. Here's the payoff line:

"Then one foggy Christmas Eve, the sheriff came to say: "Rudolph with your gun so bright, won't you shoot my wife tonight?"

Oh. My. God.

My father's head spun around and came off his shoulders as fire came shooting from his eyes, ears, mouth and nose. As his skull flew about the car in a rage and my flesh crisped in the stream of flames I heard him shout "I DON'T EVER WANT TO HEAR YOU SING THAT AGAIN!" I'm sure there was more to the diatribe but you get the gist.

It was a very quiet drive to Oklahoma City that day. And to this day, when I hear Rudolph I often find myself thinking about that bowl-legged cowboy and his shiny gun.