Singalong

The Artist formerly known as 

This morning Ava and I went to a singalong. On Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Park Slope’s original 7th Avenue Tea Lounge turns off its rambling Grateful Dead and allows approximately 800 nannies, moms, and babies to congregate on the sofas to sing about alligators and body parts. Ava was not entirely vocal but seemed to enjoy herself. The half dozen aspiring novelists parked since early morning with French press coffee pots however, did not. They tripped over folded double-strollers, nearly losing their black rim glasses, on the way to the toilet while Good morning to you was repeated around the room.

I love Ava and certainly think that music is very important to toddler education but I really felt like a fraud this morning. I simply didn’t have the energy to jazzercise through Head-shoulders-knees-and-toes or the extra verse of Wheels-on-the-bus added for the “nannies on the bus.” It’s a strange mashing of worlds—the stroller-pushers, usually relegated to tucking their vehicles in corners and hushing their kids into “indoor voices,” break through to say “Goddamit, this is our coffee shop too, I will order my decaf-skim latte and my child will clap loudly through BINGO and you will not complain, because there are more of us than you.”

Ava sat on my lap, happy to observe and lick a key lime cookie. And I attempted to learn a song about catching a taxi...something like “it’s easier than a walk crosstown.” Eventually the nannies filed out, with irritated glances from the writers. I started wondering what it might be like if grown-ups regularly gathered for sing-alongs, and then I realized that I guess this is the phenomenon we call karaoke. Maybe most of us find joy sitting in a 4 by 6 foot room singing along to highlighted words on a screen because it reminds us of when we learned the new verse of Row row row your boat and slumped on a lap, drooling as we gazed across the room at future finance guys, writers, stay-at-home moms, starving artists, bar flys, teachers, and socialites before any of those barriers were built.