Gordon Francis Is A Nerd

"Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday dear granddad Happy birthday
to you, you were born in a zoo, where you lived with the monkeys and
you look like one too." That was the song that greeted me at a recent
but all too frequently recurring birthday anniversary of mine. This
contrived song sent my grandchildren into a paroxysm of laughter, as
they warbled it to me at the breakfast table.
Children the world over imagines their renditions of these and similar
lyrical clich?s are of their own creation. They don't realise that my
age group sang the same type of ditty when we too were children and
considered, quite wrongly of course that the words were our
design.
Nonetheless there are many funny stories, expressions and songs that
youngsters quite innocently devise from their fertile, uninhibited
minds. Many of these originals are as the result of misconceptions of
information and instructions given to them by us adults.
Alan my Grandson now aged eight came home from nursery school when he
was four years old singing at the top of his reedy voice. "Gordon
Francis is a nerd." This unfamiliar line was repeated over and over
again. When I heard it I had an image in my head of some other
four-year-old wearing a fair-isle pullover a bobble hat and an anorak
while he collected train numbers. I shuddered to think of a toddler of
such tender years being thus labelled by his tiny contemporaries.
My daughter Yvonne, Alan's' Mum said to him "who's Gordon Francis, is
he in your class?" Alan shook his head seriously and answered "No he's
not in my class." "Well why are you singing about him then?" He
shrugged his shoulders and told his mother "The teacher told us to."
"Why on earth would she ask you to sing a song like that?" "For
Christmas Mum, that's why, for Christmas"
After probing Alan for a few minutes we realised that what our
four-year-old was singing was in fact a line from a Christmas carol.
The words that he was warbling were his interpretation of the gifts
that the three Magi had brought the baby Jesus, gold, frankincense and
myrrh.
Before the Gordon Francis episode and shortly after he had started at
nursery, Alan while having a bath was trying to sort out relationships
between himself his various aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, etc.
My daughter Yvonne and Graeme her husband spent a long time explaining
the various and convoluted relationships, even the honorary ones and
those disrupted by death and divorce. Eventually it came to the
relatively uncomplicated kinship of Alan to them, his parents. They
finished the long complex narration with "so therefore baby Abigail is
our daughter and you Alan, are our son."
The toddler looked earnestly at his doting parents and shook his head,
"No I'm not I'm a mushroom." Both parents looked at their freshly
scrubbed, dripping offspring in surprise. "I used to be a sun but now I
am a mushroom."
Graeme and Yvonne chortled inwardly at their small mushroom, using all
the self-control they could muster to prevent themselves from bursting
into laughter at Alan's remark. "Granddad will be pleased to know that
we have a mushroom in the family." Graeme chuckled as he towelled his
son; or rather his self titled fungal progeny.
Alan was quizzed as to why he had metamorphosed from a little boy to a
fungus. "No I'm still a boy, but I'm not a sun anymore." Only then was
it revealed that as most of the toddlers could not read, therefore it
was necessary to use hieroglyphs on their cloakroom pegs. Since a small
girl had wanted to be beside her small friend, Alan had gallantly
changed his sun clothes-hook for her mushroom coat hanger. Still it
could have been worse; Alan could have been transmuted to a porky the
pig's peg, which would have really puzzled his parents.
My three daughters are all married with a brace of children apiece.
However the misnomers and misunderstandings of my grandchildren often
remind me of their mothers misinterpretations when they themselves were
children. Leslie the youngest of my daughters at the age of four, when
asked what language she spoke used to answer with conviction that the
tongue she used was Ogrish.
Leslie's' eldest daughter Ashley aged three asked her mum what she was
reading, the book was a catalogue of keep fit equipment. Leslie showed
her the publication, opened at a picture of a shapely model using a
walking machine, and said, "that's what mummy's getting." "Will you get
her hair as well mum?" Ashley enquired in all innocence.
Zo?, Ashley's younger sister aged two was admonished by Dale, my son
in-law for throwing her shoe at Keegan the family cat (named after
Kevin Keegan the ex Newcastle United Manager). Her daddy told her that
it was cruel, as after all, the cat never threw shoes at her. Some time
later Zo? came into the room carrying, or rather dragging one of her
father's gardening boots and said "look daddy Keegan threw this at me,
he's very cruel."
Karen, my second daughter often enjoyed chewing coal as a toddler. This
was a practise we did not actively discourage since a ton of coal was
much cheaper than a similar amount of Rusks. When she was older she
used to approach everything with zeal; her mother and I put this down
to her formative coal chewing years putting a fire in her belly. The
mastication of coal was cut short however when we switched over to
North Sea gas. Our reason for changing our fuel supply was related to
economy, but unfortunately the savings gained were offset by the
resulting increase in our Rusk bill.
When she was attending infants school Karen picked things up quite
quickly and would recite them to us her proud parents. One evening
after I had read Yvonne and Karen a bedtime story, as was the custom, I
got the two of them to say their prayers. The prayer session usually
consisted of asking God to bless every relative plus a list of
favourite toys and pets. This occasion though differed from the norm by
Karen instead of the usual God blesses began to proudly recite the
Lords' Prayer. It was word perfect except for the first line that she
recounted as "Our father, Harold be thy name." When she had otherwise
voiced the prayer perfectly I asked her who Harold was, to which she
replied "you know him with the pipe, you know, the government
man."
Harold Wilson the then Prime Minister would probably have been called a
variety of names but I'm sure that it must have been the first time
that he was confused with the Almighty. When she was some years older
and started taking an interest in the hit parade one song that Karen
sang in particular took my interest because of its chorus that started
"Don't cry for me Sergeant Tina." This to my way of thinking was
obviously the request of a lover sinking towards death while beseeching
his paramour, a police sergeant not to shed any tears for him. The fact
that the male lover sang in a soprano voice did not register. Perhaps
it was that I had accepted that Cupido in the Marriage of Figaro was
also a male role taken by a woman. At that time I had never heard of
Andrew Lloyd Webber, (to name but a few), nor of his musical 'Evita.' A
musical in which Eva Peron, or rather an actress portraying her,
vocalises 'Don't cry for me Argentina.'
Karen and her Scottish husband Kenny live in Currie, a suburb of
Edinburgh; their son Ryan when being potty trained at the age of two,
like his mother before him was a quick learner. Only he had his own
version of the instruction. He still filled his nappy but now he
removed it then emptied its contents into the pot. Ryan at four years
started nursery school, the nursery teacher asked the children to
imagine that they had a large blue balloon, and to walk round the room
bouncing their illusory balloon in the air. She noticed that after a
short while that my grandson had sat down, whereupon she asked the boy
why he wasn't bouncing his balloon? He replied "my balloon has burst,
so I've put it in my pocket!"
Bethany, Ryan's baby sister is just reaching her comical age and no
doubt will soon be presenting us with more anecdotes. The only
difference being hers like her brother's will more likely have a
Scottish flavour to them?
Frequently it is said that kids, just like Keegan the cat can be very
cruel. I prefer to think that if you watch and listen to them, like
Gordon Francis they can be naturally, extremely humorous.

by Don Passmore ?