Anachronism
I've come to the conclusion over the last little while that I'm somewhat of an anachronism. I really firmly hit this conclusion the other day at lunch with E when discussing music that had been part of our childhoods, and I had these strange songs that she didn't know, hadn't even heard of. Now, I'll admit that there is a difference in E's and my age, but it's not exactly Woody Allen-ish. Yes she might have been in diapers when I was going to the movies to see Star Wars, but I was still going with a parent, and getting in for the kids' price.But some of the music I grew up hearing my mother sing around the house, was truly from another age. I'm talking about lots of WWI songs and similar vintages. Great songs like Mademoiselle from Armentieres, Monkey to the Chimp, Pack Up Your Troubles, and one of my personal favorites, Flat Foot Floogie.
The thing is, my mom wasn't even old enough to know these songs first hand. She hadn't been born when they were sung and popular. Take that last Flat Foot Floogie, the latest of the songs on my list. Okay, mom was around when it first came out. But she was still single digits, and if you were rounding off to the nearest 10, she'd round down to zero, if you know what I mean. So it got me to wondering, where did she hear these that all those years later she was singing them to me to hear and remember (and now sing to my kids)? Then it hit me, these were her parents' songs.
Her father was old when he had her. I mean old. He'd be well into his triple digits now if he were still alive, and deeply into "medical miracle" territory. He's old enough to have served in the Riel Rebellion of 1885. He was also in the first world war. I suspect that he's the one who modified the lyrics to Mademoiselle from Armentieres into the version I know now. They're not dirty, just different.
As to the others, well, they could've been from either, but her mom loved to sing, and those songs were all the music of her teenage years. That was 14-18 for my Grandmother, and music from your teenage years sticks with you all your life. And so she sang them to my mom when she was a little girl, and mom passed them on to me the same way. And now I'm singing them to my boy (soon to be boys) almost a hundred years after the fact. So an anachronism is built, one out of place item at a time...
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