A Run for the Borders

Tuesdays are Daddy Nights. Mom goes knitting and Dad takes one or more girls to do something that is cheap and interesting. Last night that consisted of letting Matilda wander the aisles of Borders for some summer reading and a quick preorder of the new Harry Potter tome.

Mom ended up joining us because no one was able to make it to knitting. While she looked at books, the girls and I investigated some CDs. While Matilda was rifling through random stacks of discs looking for some of the latest Pop Tart’s effluvium, Gertrude noticed the listen station.

“What’s this?”

“Well, if you take a CD and scan it, you can listen to the songs before you buy.” It goes without saying that this offer was too much to pass up.

I grabbed a CD and set her up with the headphones. Seeing a three-year-old with giant headphones on is pretty damn funny, I must admit. It was not unlike this photo from mom’s Flikr reel. Except, in that picture, I think she’s listening to 1910 Fruitgum Company. She likes the bubblegum.

So, we started with They Might Be Giants’ “No”. She waited patiently for the intro to queue up and then her little foot started a tapping and her hands went up to the headphones like Dionne Warwick in the “That’s What Friends Are For” video and she started belting out:

“Here on Fibber Island la la la la la Rubber guitars! la la la la la Bicycle for hats! la la la la la” I tapped her to remind her that, while she was amazingly cute, she was in public and did not need to shriek the songs at the top of her lungs.

“BUT I CAN’T HEAR ME” she bellowed. So I turned down the volume. We were quickly bored with TMBG and moved on to Wilco for a bit. Then Matilda noticed that we were playing around with the machine and wanted in on the act. So they began to fight over the headphones.

This is the beauty of a mass consumption culture. There was another machine mere feet away. Everyone could be happy and stand there quietly listening to music. So, I went and got a CD that I knew both of them would flip over. Carole King’s “Tapestry”. Yes, the CD with what Gert calls “The Girls Song”, which is “Where You Lead”.

I scanned and started it for Gert and then ran over and did the same for Matilda. The scene unfolded like this:

Gert gets wide-eyed, the same look that a Dead fan would get if Jerry Garcia’s ghost appeared and started singing “Truckin’”.

Gert (loudly): “Wanting you the way I do / I only want to be with you!” I give her the shush sign, because again she was singing at full tilt, so she brings it down a notch. Just a notch.

Ten seconds later, Matilda: “Wanting you the way I do / I only want to be with you!” I tapped her on the shoulder and reminded her we were in public and that she didn’t need to sing at the top of her lungs.

“BUT I CAN’T HEAR ME” she bellowed.

Weren’t we just here?

Meanwhile, Gert has started dancing and singing at the listening station. She’s doing a little butt wiggle and when she gets to the “I always wanted to live in New York City” part, she does a twirl. Better yet, when it gets to the end of the song she starts singing back up too, every “Yeah” and “ooh” is well represented.

Once the dual cuteness was over, and the small crowd we attracted dispersed we gathered our things and headed towards checkout.

“You know,” I said, “this is the exact reason we have Daddy Night. So you guys can do weird things. The type of things that make you uniquely you. Next time we come to Borders and use the listening station, I’m bringing a hat. Because we could have cleared at least a $100 in tips tonight. And I get 10% before the split.”