Did you feed my cow

Lately Ellie has really gotten into singing, probably to compliment her undeniably hot yet age inappropriate dance skills.



Ellie being my first child, I am not yet well versed in cute little children's songs. Aside from Twinkle Twinkle, which she has sung over and over enough times in the past two weeks to make a person do something they might regret, I got nothing.

Having few go-tos, I usually just sing songs I like but make up G-rated words. For instance: "Rolling down the street smoking windows, sipping on shin and shoes".

She really doesn't know the difference.

But last night after story time I was really racking my brain to remember something, ANYTHING, that I might have sang as a kid in my music class.

My music teacher's name was Mrs. Rayford, a wonderfully nice woman who could have given you a first-hand eyewitness account of what actually happened to the dinosaurs.

I thought and thought about what we used to sing as she went room to room with her bright blue cart toting her record player and stack of 33s. Out of nowhere I suddenly remembered something. It was foggy at first, but as I sang the first few words the song slowly but surely came back to me in its entirety:

Did you feed my cow? (Yes, Ma-am)
Could you tell me how? (Yes, Ma-am)
What did you feed her? (Corn and Hay)
What did you feed her? (Corn and Hay)

Did you milk her good? (Yes, Ma-am)
Now did you milk her like you should? (Yes, Ma-am)
How did you milk her? (Squish, Squish, Squish)
How did you milk her? (Squish, Squish, Squish)

Did my cow get sick? (Yes, Ma-am)
Was she covered with tick? (Yes, Ma-am)
How did she die? (Uh, Uh, Uh)
How did she die? (Uh, Uh, Uh)

Did the buzzards come? (Yes, Ma-am)
Did the buzzards come? (Yes, Ma-am)
How did they come? (Flop, Flop, Flop)
How did they come? (Flop, Flop, Flop)

What kind of fucked up children's music curriculum involves singing about sickly tick infested livestock who meet a horrible death then get picked apart by buzzards? And what the hell kind of lesson are they teaching kids about friendship? You don't let a friend's cow just die then get eaten by buzzards, man!

No wonder I had blocked it out.

But having nothing else I sang it to her anyway.

I was actually really glad that I dug up her picture in my yearbook because I also came across this little fun paper trail down memory lane:



Notice how I had four best friends and three boyfriends? Just looking at my wistful "come back Steve" scrolled across the top of the page re-opened the wound he left. It ripped my heart out when my boyfriend in the #1 slot just up and moved away after the passionate year we spent together without so much as a promise to write.

Also notice my little disclaimer "not true autographs" in the left margin? Probably because none of these people actually knew that I even existed so I was left with no other option to memorialize those I spent my first grade year with by being the only person to sign my own yearbook.

Even at age six I was winning.