Michael’s stop
But even though she might not ever be a star on the court, I figured we might bond over nba fandom. It’s always fun to have your team, and to share them with a small band of like-minded people. Michael had used the top pick in the draft to select Kwame Brown, an unknown player, who was making the jump from the NBA to high school. I didn’t know anything about him, but he had worked out in the front of the GOAT, and that was enough. Michael was a winner. He had also replaced the college coach with Doug Collins, another winner, and, saints preserve us, he had decided to come back and play!
He had retired at the top of his game. He still looked great and there were rumors that he was dominant in scrimmages on the practice court. I even bought a Jordan Wizards jersey, feeling that it was going to be a part of something special.
That year, Anna was going to day-care in my office, the US Courts building, which is right next to Union Station on Capitol Hill, and several stops on the red line from our house in Northwest. That 30 minutes, coming and going, on the subway in a suit and tie with a two year old, was by far the longest hour of the day for me. I look back on it fondly now, but when I dropped off Anna at Day-Care and got on the elevator to go up to my office, I knew that the rest of the day was going to be easy by comparison.
She needed constant entertaining on the subway, and I tried to mix up a combination of books and games. We would play I Spy (Do you see anyone with a newspaper; an umbrella; a hat, etc; and I tried to have a piece of trivia about each stop. When we would get to Gallery Place/Chinatown, I would tell Anna” “This is Michael’s stop,” imagining the GOAT getting off the train and swiping his fare card as he ascended to the luxury of the newly opened MCI Center.
After awhile, she knew this stuff by heart, and would announce to anyone seated near us that Gallery Place was “Michael’s stop,” usually adding, sua sponte that her favorite stop was Van Ness, although she pronounced it “Bean Ness” and could never explain just why it was her favorite. “I like Bean Ness” she would explain, if I or anyone asked what it was about that particular station that was so special
We also got Direct TV that year, and we would watch the Wizards on the local network. I had fallen in love with Tivo, and would start watching the 7:00 games at 8:00, knowing that I could fast forward through the commercials and halftime and finish up the game pretty much in sync with real time.
Anna would start the games with me, asking lots of questions about Michael and Rip--Richard Hamilton, who was looking like a decent foil to the Wizards new #1 option. But it wasn’t the same Jordan. He had no hops left, and his game seemed to consist of about 80% fadeaway jumpers. The danger of the mid-range jumper was not yet known--at least to me--and even though I marveled at the artistry of his game, the airborne part of it was gone. I remember going to a game against the Timberwolves that year, and when Jordan intercepted a pass and was off on a breakaway, the crowd rose to its feet, knowing what was to come. I can’t remember exactly what happened. The story is better if he missed the dunk, but I think he barely made it. It was a synecdoche for everything we got from his time in washington: a shadow of what he had been exacerbated by a sullen refusal to admit that it was over and he had a lot to learn about the management side.
The Music
Music is a different story, though it is the same in that you begin wanting your kids to love what you love, and some of it rubs off; some doesn’t and then after awhile you have a shared hsitory and a partnership of equals. Anna had a powerful interest in music from an early age, and, or should I say, but, that began with Raffi and the Wiggles. Lloyd Cole recommended Woody Guthrie’s “Songs to Grow on” on his new website in 2001, and although I liked it all right, it didn’t connect with Anna the way Dorothy the Dinosaur and Bananaphone did. Anna was obsessed with a version of “Marie’s Wedding” by the Wiggles, and we used that to introduce her to some other Irish music, and, by association, to Great Big Sea and Riverdance
I tried to work songs that I thought she might like into the new recordable cd technology that was quickly replacing my mix tape universe, and I had some success with songs like “Ham and Eggs” by A Tribe Called Quest, “The Influence” by Jurassic 5 and “Pressure Drop by the Clash; songs that were catchy and contained choruses both memorable and singable.a time,
For her 3rd birthday I made a cd as a party favor, titling it Kid Rock and including the picture below as the cover. The playlist was as follows:
Len: Did you Steal My Sunshine
3 is a Magic Number
Buddy Holly: That’ll Be the Day
Raffi: Bananphone
Paul Simon: Love me Like a Rock
Norman Blake: You are my Sunshine (from the O Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack))
De La Soul: Tread Water
Jackson 5: ABC
They Might Be Giants: Don’t Let’s Start
Pete Seeger: If I Had a hammer
Banana Splits Theme Song
Louis Armstrong: If I Could Talk to the Animals
Between the Lions Monkey Time Theater: Sven Said Ted
Beatles: Penny Lane
Shirley Ellis: The Name Game
Ernie: Rubber Ducky
Woody Guthrie: Pick it Up
Tribe Called Quest: Ham and Eggs
KC and the Sunshine Band: Boogie Shoes
Kool and the Gang: Celebration
5th Dimension: Up, Up and Away
Barenaked Ladies: If I had a million dollars
Mystery Song
I’m pretty sure the final song on the cd is This Land is Your Land. In a brilliant metaphor for everything that is great and terrible about technology (and me, I suppose) I found the cover photo on my Google Drive and a copy of the CD in one of the four giant binders to which my bookshelves of discs and jewel cases have now been reduced. I can’t find a copy of the cover, but I did have the cd. When I connected my drive to my computer, I tunes was quickly able to play the old format (it’s probably a Cd-R, if that even still exists) and I quickly fast forwarded through the songs until I got to the last track, where the player failed. But I can tell that the track is 2:19 and looking at my ITunes Library, the only songs that seem plausible candidates for the final track are the one I mentioned and Leadbelly’s Goodnight Irene. I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty sure that’s the case, and I’m actually delighted that it worked out the way it did.
Anyway, we listened to that a fair bit, and some of the songs wormed their way into Anna’s life. Not all of them, mind you, and not all of the ones that I would have bet on (The Name Game, for example). Len stuck, for some reason, as did the Beatles and They Might be Giants, largely because of the hilarity of the “Wake up, smell the cat food/In your bank account” lyric. And I had found the formula: make mixes of favorite songs, sprinkled with a few songs from your collection that you think she might like. See what works; repeat ad infinitum. That’s how Otis Redding, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Clegg and Prince came into our shared folder; and it led Anna into many voyages of discovery and a rich musical experience that would find her introducing me to new material in the not too distant future.
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