Out of nowhere, from the back seat of the car, Dubsie yells “wrecking balls inside my brain!” and when we turn to look she grins like she’s done something awesome.
We look at each other and mouth the question — where did she get that? — and our sweet family drive is suddenly tainted by this disoriented feeling. Guilt crossed with confusion, like your cute little three-year-old somehow slipped your grasp when you weren’t watching and smoked cigarettes in an abandoned lot with God knows who, and it’s all you fault, you horrible, horrible negligent excuse for a parent.
“Uhhhh….is that from a song?” Mummy asks carefully.
“Yes,” Dubsie replies.
Silence as the adults do some hard thinking. Dubsie’s most violent song to date had been about an itsy-bitsy spider that made some bad choices involving a water spout, and now she’s hollering about wrecking balls and brains.
“Who taught it to you?” Mummy says sternly.
“Cousin Jane,” Dubsie replies.
Ahhhh. A sigh of relief. Jane is six years old and is no vector of malice. We learned later that “wrecking balls inside my brain” is a line from ‘Fight Song,’ a pop hit that had infected Dubsie’s cousin. It was also the anthem playing when Hillary Clinton walked on to the stage at the Democratic convention to accept her nomination. (Ha ha, doesn’t that seem like a utopia now.)
It is Dubsie’s first pop song, and she’s fallen hard. We can extract just about any concession from her if the reward involves playing ‘Fight Song’ on my iPhone.
The 3 minutes 25 seconds it plays is her sacred time to dance around the living room like a crazy person and sing to herself. Try to join in, or pump your fist in the air during the drum part, and she shuts you down with a “NO, Daddy!” This is her moment, her diva requiem, the first of many pop songs she will be unable to get out of her brain, and now neither can we.
Might take a wrecking ball.
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