Misdirection

Personally, I'm a fan of the occasional lyrical misdirection: that is, the use of an expected rhyme to create a certain effect, while ultimately shying away from actually voicing the (often vulgar) word or notion.

Example? In the gym on Saturday - note the author, offhandedly calling attention to his healthy fitness regime - my IPod offered up The Killers' Mr. Brightside, a rollicking song about jealousy:

Now I'm falling asleep

And she's calling a cab
While he's having a smoke

And she's taking a drag

Now they're going to bed

And my stomach is sick

And it's all in my head

But she's touching his...

You knew, of course, that the following word was chest - right, reader? But, boy, the song wants us to envision another possibility.

Or, today, at the library's Mother Goose on the Loose half hour, our intrepid group leader led us through a rousing reading of Mem Fox's Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes. It's full of anticipated rhymes (And both of these babies, as everyone knows, had ten little fingers, and...). But it also includes - or at least seemed to, to my addled mind - an odd, unintended inevitability, at one point. After meeting a number of babies with ten fingers and ten toes, we arrive at the writer's own child: "But the next baby born was truly divine,a sweet little child who was mine, all mine..." Good Lord, I thought; that doesn't rhyme with ten! I wondered how the little group of parents and nannies, and babies, would react to a child with nine toes. And yet, not to worry; Mem Fox brought us home, subsequently, with a reassuring "And this little baby—as everyone knows..." Ten fingers, ten toes.

In the same vein, it's fun to try to predict what Cleo, who's now crawling confidently about the house, will do in various spaces. Sometimes it's obvious: if there's a new feature - a vacuum cleaner left out, or a Cheerio on the floor - she'll quickly scoot over to that. Occasionally, though, I think I'll know where she's headed, only to learn that I've misanticipated, again. Assuming, the other day, that she was crawling over to the kitchen cabinets, to work through, again, our small collection of tupperware, I barely stopped her when she continued on to the cat food, and nearly took a large bite.

Songs and stories can have a certain flow.

Their arc is something we think we know.

But trusting rhymes too much leads to: Uh-