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Utopian Turtletop. Monsieur Croche's Bête Noire. Contact: turtletop [at] hotmail [dot] com
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
I saw Gone with the Wind for the first time recently, and was struck by the singing at a birthday scene. When the film was made, “Happy Birthday to You” was already in ascendance, but that song had not yet been written when the story takes place. People sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” which is much more rousing. I mentioned to my beloved spouse that I might prefer it as a birthday song, and she replied that yes, it is a rousing tune, but the words are gender-specific, and that while people might sing “For she’s a jolly good fellow,” the primary meaning of “fellow” is male, and such linguistic exclusions exert a subtle sexism. She’s right, and the only word we could think of that worked in the opposite direction was “nurse,” with its gender-specific verb definition of suckling an infant, but we both agreed that “nurse” was a weaker example of the phenomenon than “fellow.” I proposed “For She’s a Jolly Good Woman” as a way to sing the song for a woman.
Saturday afternoon my son and I went to the birthday party of a pre-school classmate of his. His pre-school teaches Mandarin. Most of the parents are Chinese immigrants, as are the parents of the boy whose birthday it was. When the cake came out, another child of Chinese immigrants asked whether we should sing the “cha-cha-cha” version of “Happy Birthday.” The birthday boy’s mom said Yes, so the 6-year-old who asked the question led us in the raggedy-est version of “Happy Birthday to You (Cha-cha-cha)” that I’ve ever heard; eliminating the “cha-cha”s would not have tightened things up appreciably. And I noticed that most of the parents didn’t really know the song, so the kids were on their own.
On the way home from that party I had intended to take the kid birthday-present shopping for my beloved spouse, whose birthday it still is today, but snow, which seldom lasts a day in Seattle, had fallen, so we had to hurry home to play in the snow, which we did. That evening we went to another friend’s 45th birthday party. After “Happy Birthday” I launched into “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” which people joined in on, with feeling, and the birthday boy ad-libbed a variant on the last line, “which 40 percent of the people can’t deny.” This crowd of people has an additional birthday song, which followed, with attendant actions, carried out by the one whose birthday it is (to the tune of “Dinah won’t you blow, Dinah won’t you blow, Dinah won’t you blow your horn,” from “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”):
Skip around the room
Skip around the room
We won’t shut up till you skip around the room
Skip around the room
Skip around the room
We won’t shut up till you skip around the room
And so the host skipped, followed by a trail of people, and it was very merry.
Sunday I had plans to go birthday shopping again, in the afternoon, after dropping my beloved spouse off at work, but it cold and windy and rainy, and I couldn’t bear the thought of her taking the bus home at 11:00 o’clock at night in that weather (her standard Sunday shift), so she drove (we have one car), and I wasn’t going out with the 4-year-old shopping in that weather either. My usual Monday is an 11-hour day, so shopping was out yesterday. So the only thing left to do was to take Tuesday off, which I did.
And it’s been a very nice birthday. The kid and I made a successful shopping foray, and he and I baked a cake, and we went to dinner with a friend and had neighbors over for cake, and it’s been a very nice birthday indeed.
For she’s a jolly good woman.
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