I recently removed The Johnny Cash Children's Album from Elijah's in-car rotation. Unlike other music that gets banished, never to be listened to again, Johnny Cash will return. But even The Man In Black gets old after a while.

It used to be that I had a couple of beers and went online to get into trouble. Now I just order children's music off Amazon. The other day a shipment arrived containing three CDs: Tom T. Hall Sings Songs For Children, the new John Lithgow album, and a collection of Roger Miller songs. This list should permanently put to rest my undeserved reputation as an indie-rock snob parent.

After listening to the repetitive, whiny singing on Elijah's hideous favorite TV shows--The Backyardigans and The Wonder Pets--it's a relief to just hear relatively intelligent lyrics backed by unsynthesized music. So allow me to justify my purchases. Lithgow makes charming records for kids with a kind of merry big-bandish Broadway-like sound. I like that kind of music; I can't help it if I have the tastes of an aging queen.

The Tom T. Hall album, which is about a bunch of animals who live in a place called Fox Hollow, also has a lot of folksy charm. One of the songs is about a basset hound who successfully auditions to appear on Johnny Cash's TV show.

"Johnny Cash has a TV show?" Elijah asked.

"Yes," I said.

Someday, I will get up the courage to tell Elijah that his hero is no longer alive.

But the Roger Miller album is the real hit.

I'm not entirely sure why I bought the record. Roger Miller has always been a guilty pleasure of mine, ever since this aging queen saw Rene Auberjunois in the original 1985 Broadway production of Big River! And you know, some of his songs are damn catchy.

I guess Elijah thinks so, too, because now we don't listen to anything else in the car, even though the real meaning of "dang me, dang me, gonna take a rope and hang me," probably eludes him. When I asked him what "Chug-A-Lug," a song about 15-year-old boys getting drunk on moonshine, was about, he said, "a choo-choo train."

Naturally, the album's highlight is "You Can't Roller-Skate In A Buffalo Herd," a childhood staple now entering its fourth decade of belovedness. Last night, I caught Elijah on the couch singing these lyrics to the dog: "You can be happy if you put your mind to it. Knuckle down, buckle down, do it do it do it."

"AWWWWWW," went the laugh track to my imaginary sitcom.

One of Miller's signature moves is the controlled stutter. It's different in different songs, but you're all probably familiar with that "dig-a-doo-dig-a-doo" sound. Elijah has grown familiar as well. The other day in the car he said,

"Daddy, this song is making my brain skip."

"Huh?" I said.

"What?" Elijah said. "W-w-what?"

Something in the songs was making Elijah want to holler hidey-ho. We were about five seconds away from a total Roger Miller-induced synapse seizure. I turned it off immediately. Now we continue to listen to the record, but in controlled doses. Johnny Cash may be back sooner than I thought.

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