N stands for No, I Don't Know Any Children's Songs

Sunday's song circle started out fun. We had a couple of older men, my friend Stacy and me. Some other women wandered in. No one else had brought an instrument, so I got to accompany everyone, whether or not I knew the songs. No problem. But then a woman arrived with a flock of children, seven or eight of them. They have come before, and they're great kids, but suddenly all we were singing was kid songs, and I was the only one who didn't know them.

Yes, I remember "This Old Man" and "Itsy Bitsy Spider" from my own long-ago youth, but not stuff like "The Green Grass Grew All Around," "The Little White Duck" or anything written within the last 50 years. Everybody else, including the lovely older men, knew all the songs from their kids and grandkids. Everyone looked at me to lead the songs because I had the guitar, and I had to keep telling them, "I don't know how it goes." Our books had words and chords but not notes or rhythms. I'd strum a chord and say, "You have to sing it because I don't know how." It was like saying I didn't speak English.

The songs were easy enough. I caught on, although I won't remember them. The others had probably sung them so many times they will never forget them. Ninety years old in a nursing home with dementia, they will still know these silly songs.

It's not just kids' music that I don't know. I started to read a parody of the book "Good Night, Moon" the other day and realized I only knew the title, so the rest of it didn't make any sense to me. Likewise, I don't know kids' TV shows or movies. Somebody will mention a cartoon character, and I don't know anything about him.

Meanwhile, the people next to me were singing these songs with gestures and clapping at all the right places and having a great time. I do sing children's songs for the kids at church. But I have sheet music and recordings, so I can learn them in advance, and I love watching the little ones wiggle around trying to do the gestures. But don't expect me to know all the songs every other grownup seems to know.

N is for No, I don't know that song because I never had any kids.

N was going to be for Nana, a name some of my friends use for Grandmother. Well, I'm not that either.

If you don't have children or grandchildren, do you have another channel to kid culture? Please share.

Throughout the month of April, I'm participating in the A to Z blog challenge. Visit Unleashed in Oregon tomorrow to see what O stands for.

And the ducks go quack, quack, quack

This fall I'm going to be leading and playing piano for children's music at church. They sing simple little ditties accompanied by gestures. Until last week at our late music director Catherine's funeral, I hadn't seen it done, and I didn't know any of the songs. I struggled to find a key that fit the kids' monotone voices, and people kept telling me to go faster.

Catherine had eight children and oodles of grandchildren, but it's all foreign to me. All the kids and their parents know the songs from having gone to religious education classes, but I have to learn them from sheet music. I'm going to be the only one who doesn't know the songs already because I wasn't part of that world. I could have taught religious education classes and joined that world, but I didn't because I didn't know anything about children, and I was too busy singing with the adults. When I was a kid, we sang songs like "Holy God, We Praise They Name," not "The Ducks Go Quack, Quack, Quack," complete with wing-flapping. Wish me luck.

This brings back the time when I sang at a birthday party for a friend's 5-year-old son and I bought this Raffi book and did my best to cram the songs because I didn't know any kid songs then either. They wanted the same songs over and over, and they sat so close, touching me and my guitar, that I couldn't wait to get away. I'm not used to having children invading my space. It was one of the hardest gigs I ever did.

It's just another side-effect of not having children. You don't know the songs. And the kids think you're an idiot.