Nursery Nonsense: part one

OK, I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but the pickings are just too rich.  Here we go - nursery rhymes - what the fuck?

I find myself mindlessly singing them to the baby, out of a sense that children should know nursery rhymes, and one I started with was Hey Diddle Diddle.

To refresh the memories of anyone who hasn't recently had a child:

Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle.
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed to see such fun
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Now the baby is fourteen weeks old.  She knows practically nothing.  She can't tie her shoelaces, hasn't got a job, and hasn't even realised that the baby in the mirror is her.  Silly baby.  It's not her fault, of course, and it's our job as parents to fill her empty little head full of useful knowledge.  How to read a bus timetable.  How to calculate compound interest.  Why it's important that you follow the Shakespearean rhyme scheme when writing your own sonnets.  The important things in life.

Bearing this in mind, you would think that nursery rhymes would lend themselves to helping children understand the world around them, to cope with this strange and unfamiliar world.  But no.  What we learn from the above is:

- Cats can play the violin.  Now the baby may actually have an idea of what a cat is.  Because of Monty Cat.  But he doesn't play the violin.  Although I have frequently threatened to turn him into violin strings on several occasions.

- Cows can jump.  She has no concept of what a cow is.  But the one thing she will be sure of when she meets one is that they can jump.  And also that the moon is close enough for a cow to jump over.  Astro Cow.

- Dogs have a sense of humour - and a slightly odd one at that.  They find cats playing the violin and cows jumping over the moon bloody hilarious.  Oh, also, she has no concept of what a dog is.  Other than the fact that they laugh.

- Dishes and spoons - this is probably the most disturbing.  Not so much the - some would say - unnatural match (shouldn't a spoon run away with another spoon?  Or does that make me homophobic?  Or just wanting species-specific relations?  It's a complicated moral tangle); it's more the fact that the baby sees dishes and spoons every day.  And we put them in the dishwasher.  This must seem to her like abject cruelty.  Essentially the plot to Romeo and Juliet is happening every day in front of her little baby eyes, as the two lovers are systematically drowned by Mummy and Daddy.  Oh, also she's learned that crockery can elope.

All useful things for her later life, I'm sure you'll agree.  Perhaps I'll stick to singing her bus timetables in the future.