You haven’t really lived until you’ve listened to Baby Beluga over and over from the Maine/New Hampshire border to my house. And when I say Baby Beluga, I don’t mean Baby Beluga the CD, I mean Baby Beluga the song. Just for the record, that’s 63 miles or approximately one hour of Baby Beluga. I’m not sure how many times that means we actually listened to the song; it’s probably a three minute song, so you do the math. But I assure you: it was a very long time. It felt like this last hour (of our eight hour trip from New Jersey) was an eternity.
When we crossed into New Hampshire we were probably able to hear two or three songs in between each request for “Baby! Baby!” But alas, by the time we were crossing the Piscataqua River, it was clear that hitting the repeat button was where we were at. Don’t get me wrong, I love Raffi, but by the time we got to Kennebunk, we were kind of losing it. It wouldn’t have been as bad if just the song had repeated, but this particular CD was taped at a concert and included introductory commentary. After the fourteenth time my mom (aka MK) and I started talking back to dear Raffi. Once we started, we couldn’t stop:
“I know a song about a beautiful whale!” he chimed.
“Me too!” MK said brightly from the back seat where she was further entertaining Joshua.
“Shall we sing Baby Beluga together?” he asked.
“Oh yes, LET’S!” I replied.
Three minutes passed and we couldn’t stop ourselves from singing along.
“I know a song about a beautiful whale!”
“Really? Do you?”
“Shall we sing Baby Beluga together?”
“We shan’t sing Baby Beluga, we shan’t!”
But we do. We listen and sing. Again. And again. And again.
P.S. THANK YOU MOM!!!!!