Tuesday, April 25, 2006

The Most Depressing Kid's Song In The World

A couple of nights ago Ada protested bedtime, so Chris went up to soothe her. He came down after 10 or 15 minutes.



Me: Is she out?

C: Yeah. I rocked her and sang Puff the Magic Dragon

Me: Oh great, the most depressing song ever. I mean, the kid abandons the dragon, who gets depressed and won't leave his cave.

C: My mom sang it to me as a kid and I never thought about it that way. Maybe kids see themselves as Jackie Paper, growing up and moving on.

Me: But as a kid, when I thought about getting older it didn't preclude continuing to play with dragons, had any been available.

C: Yeah. I guess I just thought Jackie Paper was an idiot.


As a side note, when I googled for images using "Puff magic dragon" I got a link to this. And I won't link to it, but if you do a google image search with those words, there is another site with an interesting dragon. I just don't want to think about what making it felt like.

Update: on further reflection, I should have said that people not ok with internet nudity should probably not run that search.

9 comments:

  1. I always thought that song was a metaphor for pot smoking... :)

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  2. Okay, that image search was...interesting. I should've known. That song always me sad as a kid too, but I remember listening to it, on purpose, when I felt maudlin.

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  3. Puff always broke my heart. off to image search.

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  4. Oh, it wasn't that I'm not "okay" with the nudity; that link just takes it a step further. No offense here, just more amazement!

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  5. Funny. Growing up, my wife was never allowed to sing "Puff, the Magic Dragon." Her mom considered it to be a pagan song about smoking dope. Now, I hear it's about child abandonment. Who knew? I always thought it was just a fun, little ditty!

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  6. How about "I should have said that people not ok with bad art should probably not run that search."

    Oh...my eyes.

    (Puff the Magic Dragon is totally suicide-inducing.)

    ~Jenny
    http://blogs.chron.com/mamadrama/

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  7. I so agree with you. Husband and I talk about this every time that it cycles through on Baby's Putomayo CD.

    But my impression was that Puff *dies* of loneliness, not just retreat to his cave. Or maybe I'm just that morbid.

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  8. Although, duh, dragons live forever.

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