Barney came to the mall this weekend. He sang and dances while the children all sang along. He brought a couple of pals along too. One with a guitar and the other with a bunch of silly hats. They sang too, and occupied the swarms of children and their parents until Barney made his appearance.Some of the other mall employees complained about the few hundred screaming children all clustered into one corner of the mall (coincidentally the corner right beside our kiosk), whereas I enjoyed hearing the tykes sing along. That is except for the alphabet song.
I was with the crowd for A, B, C, E, F, and G. I followed along happily as they sang about H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O and P. I smiled as everyone rounded Q, R, S, T, U, V. My heart sank when they cried out in unison (as though each child and parent had been born and raised south of the 49th parallel) W, X, Y and Zeeeeeeee!!!
It broke my heart. I was brought up (as were all of my English speaking ancestors) to believe that the last letter of the alphabet was called zed. I’ve always felt that you don’t change the alphabet so it rhymes in a song, and we don’t need another letter that rhymes with E, 30% of the alphabet already does! My only solace has been reading this, and then reading this. Then this kinda stirred the flames again, but I think I'm okay now!
2 comments:
It might make you happy to know my advisor corrected the JK and SKs if they said Zee instead of Zed.
I remember readind about Great Big Sea doing some kind of opening for Barney (or something like that...) anyways, Alan for some reason forgot that their audience was mostly made up of kids. After a few opening songs, he then asked "Is everyone still hung-over from last night?!" A lot of angry parents.....that's m'lads!!!
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