All I Want is Potato Chips

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life. And give a man with a kid a copy of the above CD, and you condemn him, sweetly but surely, to many months of requests for Ella Fitzgerald's hyperkinetic Old MacDonald.

At least, that's the lesson I've drawn from a seemingly well-intended New Year's gift. The CD came to us from parent friends in D.C., one of whom was unable to take, any longer, the rapid rhythm of Fitzgerald's opening track. Otherwise, though, they assured us that the CD's full of good tunes, and wondered if Cleo might like it.

Can roughly 100 requests, issued from the back of the car over the course of three months, for yai-yo be taken as conclusive evidence that, yes, she likes it? But those parents were right, too, that there are some neat tunes once you get beyond MacDonald's farm. Hearing Slim Gaillard's bizarre ode to potato chips usually makes me smile, and Lionel Hampton's 'Rag Mop' is a weirdly creative anticipation, in swing, of postmodern poetry. And I'll happily debate the Google's view that "the only song that seems out of place is Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," as it injects a serious air that is missing elsewhere." In my experience, that track forms the lovely soft ending at the end of the CD, and offers a perfect backdrop for a evening arrival at home, or for a gentle point of departure into a car nap.

Still, though, anyone who has heard of Ringu knows that sinister things can come in innocent packages. And while Ella Fitzgerald coming out of our speakers is preferable, by a long shot, to what happens in the the climax of that film, we're still reeling from the everyday consequences of the gift. It's amazing, in its own right, that a few moments of passion can lead to a lifetime of parenthood. It's only slightly less amazing that a simple gift, weighing a few ounces, can lead to a what seems like a lifetime of cute, but insistent, lobbed requests that float from the backseat to the front.

In fishing, one throws back the occasional smallfry. Is it acceptable, by the same token, to toss certain CDs from the pier every now and then?