Day 8 – A Song That You Know All The Words To
“I Saw Her Standing There” – The Beatles
When my 7 year old was a baby, he had colic, and would cry seemingly with no reason for long periods of time and with an intensity that was hard to match. Singing seemed to soothe him, at least, somewhat. I ran through my repertoire of children’s songs that I could first off remember, and second, stomach singing repeatedly after a couple of weeks. I was simply making stuff up, and poorly too.
One day in the car, along with our friend Stephen, August began crying and we couldn’t come up with what to sing. He turned around and said that anything could be a lullaby, it’s all in the delivery. In order to prove his point, he turned around and (I remember this very clearly, we were on the Alaska Way Viaduct on a sunny afternoon) started softly singing “Anarchy In The U.K.”
Inspired by his demonstration, I began singing songs I knew. I had to look up the lyrics to a couple of songs, but wound up having a repertoire of several “go to” songs. “The K.K.K. Took My Baby Away” is one, “Basket Case” is another, but my favorite one to sing, for some reason, is “I Saw Her Standing There” and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it’s just a nice simple song, or that I feel like I’m introducing The Beatles to my kids at an early age.
Now on my fourth infant (and 5th kid) I’ve been singing “I Saw Her Standing There” for over 6 years. I’ve added some songs to my lullaby rotation, dropped others, but this one has always stayed in. I love this song and hope I never forget the words.