Swingin'

For the past few days, our DVD player has housed a borrowed copy of Toy Story 2, the surprisingly strong 1999 sequel to the Pixar blockbuster. It's an appealing film for a variety of reasons: Jessie, the cowgirl, adds a degree of complexity to the roster; Woody and Buzz affirm their friendship by working hard to save each other, in turns; the composed parodies of outtakes during the credits are both silly and clever. And above it all soars Randy Newman's adroit soundtrack, which moves deftly from a retro-swing evocation of a 1950s t.v. Western to, briefly, backing overtones of a crooner ballad.

Cleo, of course, is too young to know her crooners, but such references are already inevitably familiarizing her with the form. And I, meanwhile, can recognize the references on a generic level, but don't always know the precise referent. At least, that's what happened two days ago when, after dropping her off at school I sat down in a coffeehouse to read and found myself next to the house record player, from which Frank Sinatra's voice confidently boomed.

'Make it mine,' I heard, as I looked up, interested. 'Make it mine!' And then nothing but the placid, slightly wobbly turn of the record and the diminishing tones of the song.

If you're more clever then me, you may already have recognized the source: it's 'Three Coins in a Fountain,' one of Sinatra's bigger hits. At the time, though, the specific details mattered less to me than the realization that I was in my daughter's shoes: newly exposed to a classic, and only beginning to learn the rudiments of a beloved genre.

Make it mine, Frank. And she, in time, will make it hers.