Fussy Babies

In honor of Joshua Paul Micron Keebler

My dad was a short, round, jolly man who dearly loved to sing. We always claimed that he couldn't carry a tune, but that wasn't entirely accurate. He could carry his OWN tune, but he couldn't carry anybody else's. If anyone else was singing and he joined in (which of course he would), he would invariably sing a perfect fifth off from the rest. It gave family sing-alongs a kind of Gregorian flavor, but we were used to that.

Dad loved to sing--and his favorite audience was babies. Anybody's babies. Like me, he never met a baby he didn't fall instantly in love with, and neither of us could ever resist a flirtation with a small child, whether we knew them or not. But the song we all remember the best was the one he would always sing to babies who were offended! outraged! furious! and otherwise howling their heads off. And since one of my babies was earth-shakingly colicky, we heard it a lot. It went like this:

Aaaaand a bye oh bye and an oh bye oh and a bye oh bye oh bye,
aaaaand an oh bye oh and a bye oh bye and an oh bye oh bye oh!

Over and over and over. Five notes. If he'd managed to get his hands on a crying baby, he'd rock and pat and sing this at the top of his lungs. Without fail, every baby he did this too succumbed to sleep. I can't explain it. Was there some primitive part of their brains that actually found this soothing, or were they merely terrified into quietude lest he do something worse? We'll never know, but it worked. Before long, the baby would be in that snuffly sleep characteristic of the recently screaming.

Joshua, you'll never know what you've missed.

Aaaaand a bye oh bye and an oh bye oh and a bye oh bye oh bye,
aaaaand an oh bye oh and a bye oh bye and an oh bye oh bye oh!

Love, Spud