Lessons learned

John McCutcheon has a lovely song which has been running through my head today, sort of the musical version of "all I needed to know I learned in kindergarten", except set to a catchy tune, and not followed up with "Chicken soup for the left-handed teenager with a hamster with acne's soul".

We've been walking down the street singing it with the children: unfortunately I can't link to a video of him singing it, so just let me recommend his album "Mail Myself To You" (the title track is wonderful too: they use it for a christmas advertisement for the post office here each year)

Kindergarten Wall
by John McCutcheon

When I was a little kid not so long ago
I had to learn a lot of stuff I didn't even know
How to dress myself, tie my shoes, how to jump a rope
How to smile for a picture without looking like a dope
But of all the things I learned my favorite of them all
Was a little poem hanging on the kindergarten wall

CHORUS:

   Of all you learn here remember this the best:
   Don't hurt each other and clean up your mess
   Take a nap everyday, wash before you eat
   Hold hands, stick together, look before you cross the street
   And remember the seed in the little paper cup:
   First the root goes down and then the plant grows up!

Well, it was first, second, third grade, fourth grade, too
Where I had to learn the big things the big kids do
To add, subtract, and multiply, read and write and play
How to sit in a little uncomfortable desk for nearly half a day
But of all they taught me my favorite of them all
Was the little poem hanging on the kindergarten wall

Chorus

But lately I've been worried as I look around and see
An awful lot of grown-ups acting foolish as can be
Now I know there's lots of things to know I haven't mastered yet
But it seems there's real important stuff that grown-ups soon forget
So I'm sure we'd all be better off if we would just recall
That little poem hanging on the kindergarten wall

Chorus

Yours, still learning,
N.