October 2003 | Mount your horses, draw your swords

I'm sitting here working and find myself suddenly bursting into song: One Tin Soldier, a glowering, moralistic folk tune, which I know by heart. It goes like this:

Now the valley cried with anger,
Mount your horses! Draw your swords!
And they killed the mountain people,
So they won their just rewards
Now they stood before the treasure
On the mountain dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it--
Peace On Earth, was all it said.

The year was 1982. (Or was it 83?). The teacher? A much-lauded, witch-haired, guitar strumming Mrs. X, who clearly had such fondness for the 1960's that she brought it right along with her into the anti-Communist Reagan era, and into our 5th/6th combination grade school class.

At times, her vertically challenged second husband, a good six inches shorter than her statuesque, witch-haired, spooky medallion wearing self, would appear at school festivals and such to demonstrate their shared love of singing stern, rousing 60's folk classics, complete with wreathes upon their heads and guitars in hand. Mrs. X also led the school choir, of which tiny dog herself was a member, and in which the weighty lesson of greed was taught through the indelible verses of One Tin Soldier and other ponderous, past-dated songs of its ilk.

Mrs. X never chose a song that was not teaching a morally fortifying lesson of some kind. She took particular glee in the self-esteem boosting, G-rated message of the theme from "Greatest American Hero," which if you'll recall, featured a ringlet-headed blond fumbler flying badly through the skies, accomplishing great deeds by being a mere ordinary and clumsy mortal like the rest of us.

Look at what's happened to me
I can't believe it myself
Suddenly I'm on top of the world
Shoulda been somebody else

Mrs. X. once informed me in a rare rest between peace-promoting ditties that I had in fact been hand-selected for her own social experiment. It seems that, when I was in the 5th grade or thereabouts, she had personally identified me as having a grave and contagious social disability: Negative Attitude. Being as she was much beloved by the school, and the source of all tuneage moralistic and peace-loving, she took it upon herself to draft me into her class in my sixth year, and cleanse my scowling and smart-ass-comment-making self in the G major chords of The Redtail Hawk and other ethereal long-haired tunes with the aim to make me, I suppose, positive in attitude.

But my self esteem was not the only one she was hell-bent on bolstering. One memorable project she undertook to prop up the collective class esteem was to first have us read the popular, sanitized Judy Blum tome Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, detailing the trials of a glum boy with a younger, tortoise-swallowing brother improbably named Fudge, and then, to tye dye t-shirts -- in 1983 (when Reagan called the USSR "the focus of evil in the modern world") upon which was printed the uplifting message: Fifth Grade Something (or Sixth Grade Something, as was true of half of this 5th/6th combination class).

Mrs. X punished me in various ways throughout the year, tossing me from a fairly elected class office, telling my friends to seek companions with a more positive personal outlook, secretly telling me I earned a D in math, which she erased and replaced with a C, telling my forthcoming 7th grade English teacher --who worked at a different school-- about my attitude problem-- all while sweetly singing 60's songs of communal goodness and angry tin soldier brigades, accompanied by her autoharp (a sinister, folk-friendly instrument resembling a stringed electric typewriter).

None of it worked. I promptly proceeded to 7th grade with my attitude in the toilet, and spent two years surrounded by derisive, slack-mouthed, curling-ironed peers who drew their eyeliner on their lower lids in their locker mirrors between every class, and drawled things like "Jen can't call me no slut just cause I ****'d that guy (to each other) and "you know, you are like, really weird" (to me).

But now, that's the Junior High story; I digress.

Goes to 11

Not to undermine the full scope of offerings in the Quirkyworks song blog, in fact I encourage you to make haste to the site and listen to them all immediately without even stopping first to pee, but I wanted to promote in particular The Little Rave that went to 11, being that I suggested the idea, and I am very proud that the powers at Quirkyworks turned it into a song.

It's great to have friends with talent.

Hey, peeps. Send mail to mail@tiny-dog.com.