Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

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Natural Talent

Posted May 06, 2008
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Ben

Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.

If Birdy suddenly cocks her elbows in the air and starts wagging her bottom back and forth with that kind of look on her face a puppy might get when she's sprinting past with your underpants in her mouth, well, you can guess what'll happen next. Oh - you can't? Then I'll tell you: you're about to be treated to a song. You know, just a regular song, only with all the regular lyrics swapped out for their scatological doppelgangers. For instance, the Sesame Street classic "Your Face," might go like this: "Your poop, your poop. No one has your poop." Which is funny enough, even before the clinchingly hilarious second verse: "Your pee, your pee. No one has your pee." It'll be so funny, in fact, that you might forget to laugh! Although the sight of Birdy's gleefully swaying callipygous self might actually elicit a few reluctant chuckles.

She comes by it honestly, skipping along in the potty-musical footsteps of those who have come before her. Ben, for example, being the prodigy that he is, has already taken his qualifying exams in Replacing Song Lyrics with the Words Pee and Poop and is now working towards the PhD. His favorite thing is to sit down at our electric keyboard and hammer out a stirring and soulful melody, complete with melancholic fade-out, and accompanied by such exquisitely trilled lyrics as, "Don't fart while you're peeing." The next day, while you're at work, stuffing mail in faculty mailboxes, say, you might find yourself singing it in the exact same bathroom-ballad way: Don't fart while you're pee-ing...And you will look around furtively to make sure nobody caught wind of your derangement. It really puts the "catch" back in catchy, if you know what I mean. The song version of impetigo. Or the Norwalk virus.

But now, here's a real question: Do you pee in your poop while you're pooping? No really. I'm sorry. Here's the actual real question: If your child appears to be naturally good at something, do you just enjoy it, or do you push it a little bit to translate it from an inclination to something more like a talent? I ask because Ben seems to have some real musical tendencies, and they don't come to him genetically. I mean, we like to dunce around singing folk songs, and it's true that Michael taught himself to play a little guitar, but we're not exactly the Mamas and the Papas over here. Whereas Ben can sit down at the keyboard and pick out a song that he's heard until he's playing it fluently ("Poop. Poop a poop. Make it stinky, to last your whole life long! Don't worry if it's not stinky enough for anyone else to smell. Just poop. Poop a poop!"). Mostly he pounds out endless lyricless variations of heart and soul, each more bizarrely beautiful than the last, like he's some kind of crazy, obsessive genius. But he doesn't want to take piano lessons. ("I like to leave time for relaxing - and I already have chorus once a week!" he argues by way of representing to us his great over-scheduledness.) Would you push him? Or do we risk turning something he loves into drudgery?

I really don't know. My own (cherished and wonderful) parents seemed to think that your natural talents could be left to grow on their own, like beautiful, thriving weeds, while it was your lesser inclinations that should be tended - like, say, your abhorrence of the Lord of the Flies sleep-away camp they forced you to attend, which could only be addressed by your being forced to attend repeatedly, summer after summer even if you returned home mute with horror over the various lakeside tortures you had been forced to endure (e.g. water skiing). And meanwhile, un-nagged, I filled notebook after notebook with my creative oeuvre ("The Stick of Gum Who Refused to Be Chewed"; "Run-Away Rubber band"), and so my love of writing clung to me like a gauzy secret instead of turning into a mantle of dread. And for this I am grateful, and so forgive them for Sleep-Away Camp on Elm Street, and Sleep-Away Camp on Elm Street: The Horror Returns, and Sleep-Away Camp on Elm Street: Chiggers.

But seriously. Ben and piano lessons. What would you do? Poop or pee?

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Natural Talent

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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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