Sea Shanties!

Adam & Sean 1983

I ran across this today on my GoogleReader. We've actually had conversations here in the Wilson home about large groups of men breaking out into song. The one thing we've noticed were they were either all in a saloon or on a ship. Oh! But I can't leave out Sean's favorite movie, Zulu, where all the British soldiers broke into song.

I guess my favorite will always be the sea shanties. I owe this to Adam. He was in his first year in kindergarten at Stratford Academy in Macon at the tender age of 4. I'd pick him up each day around noon and we'd talk about what he had done that morning. I clearly remember him climbing in the car and starting to sing, "How do you handle a drunken sailor, how do you handle a drunken sailor, how do you handle a drunken sailor? Throw him overboard!" Maybe I should have been appalled that this little boy was singing about tossing drunken sots overboard, but honestly, it was hilarious. To see this little blonde sweet-faced boy singing his heart out - it was too cute to be anything else.

Sean brought home a song entitled Rickabamboo from his 4th grade class. After doing a web search for the song I found the correct title to be Princess Pat and that it is considered a Boy Scout camping song. I wonder why a group of boys would be learning a song about a Princess instead of something a bit more manly, but I digress. Man, we sang that song a thousand times with Sean taking lead, me on harmony, and Adam doing a great bass line of bum, bum, bum bum bum bum, bum, bum, bum bum bum bum, etc. Silly, yes. But the memories still make me smile. And I'm betting we could still sing it together at the drop of a hat!