I know things…

Yeah.
I do.
I know some things. Some of them are useful things. Like, I know that the square root of 81 is 9 and 7 x 8 is 56. I know that a conflagration is a very large fire and that if I ever should encounter one on my person or clothes, I should stop, drop, and roll. I know that my childhood phone number was 904-385-9788 and that my grandmother’s number was 904-386-6262. And I know 800 other obsolete phone numbers and weird number facts that will never benefit me, except in my dreams.

But there are things I don’t know.  I didn’t know how to spell cacophony, until it was one of my son’s spelling words this week. I still don’t know what demography is, which is another of those words. I suppose I could make a guess and say that it is the study of categories, or something dumb like that. I don’t know. I’m not even going to look it up. Pandemic? Is this word going to enter his regular vocabulary? No. It is not.

And I don’t know lyrics. Phone numbers from 30  years ago? I got that. Lyrics I’ve been hearing and singing ALL MY LIFE, I just can’t do it. Seriously, I might mess up Amazing Grace without the song book. Tonight I tried to sing My Favorite Things from Sound of Music to my children at bedtime. This is a great, great song. Fantastic song. But it occurs to me now that it is not for the lyrically challenged. There are more words in that song than there are fleas on a dog.

I started strong: Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.

But then, out of nowhere, the words “Bright cornucopias and warm woolen mittens” came to me. Bright cornucopias? What IS that even? It’s not a lyric. I still don’t know what goes in that spot of the song, so I kept my bright cornucopia and kept singing.

Another thing I don’t know is how to file taxes in April without filing an extension. And that’s all I’ll say about that one.

Maybe I should try to create my own version that I can’t mess up:

Potty trained babies and eating with chopsticks
Soft, smelly kid toes and boys doing drop kicks
Playing like banshees till bones are in slings,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Finding a refund when taxes are over
Seeing the fourth leaf show up on your clover,
Feeling the squish hugs of toddlers who cling,
These are a few of my favorite things

When the kid wails, when it all fails,
When I’m feeling mad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don’t feel so bad.

I’d like to say I’ll remember these lyrics tomorrow but I won’t. But I know a whole bunch of old phone numbers, so I can just phone a friend and surely somebody will know what goes in the place of “bright cornucopias.”

I’m going to bed now.