My Partner and I recently took Kit to his first music concert. It was held at Edith Cowan University, and Kit went around boasting to any person who would listen (and even a few who wouldn’t), that His Dad got tickets from the Illuminati Association. Or was that the Aluminium Association? Anyway, it was a very long and impressive word, and Kit was very proud indeed that he had almost learned it!
The concert consisted of a number of different bands playing covers. Kit chatted excitedly, giving a Very Amusing Commentary, much like I don’t during movies (according to My Partner).
When they played Blame it on the Boogie, Kit sang along enthusiastically. Except that he didn’t sing, “Blame it on the boogie.” In Kit’s universe, the song consisted of screeching, “Blame it on the booger,” while thrusting one claw up his nostril. Once we cleared that up, he stopped picking his nose and had a good old boogie.
Personally, I have other issues with this particular song. I have always thought that Michael Jackson singing, “I just can’t control my feet,” was a bit disingenuous. Frankly, if the man who invented the moonwalk felt he had lost control of his extremities, where did that leave the rest of us on the dance floor? Kit thinks that when I dance, people are less likely to call me a good dancer than they are to call me an ambulance!
Later, a brass band came on stage. Suddenly, Kit’s muffled voice came from halfway up my trouser-leg (out the bottom of which his rear end was still poking), “Why don’t they keep that Yellephant in an enclosure?!”
After some intensive probing (of the questioning, not abducted-by-aliens style), it became apparent that, when I had read him the story, “Horton the Elephant,” he thought I was saying, “Horton Th’ Yellephant.” Moreover, we once took him to the zoo, where he saw Putramas, the elephant, trumpeting loudly. He thought that they were called ‘yellephants’ because of all their loud vocalising!
As a result, when Kit looked at the stage, he saw not a saxophonist playing a solo, but a Yellephant with a trunk, thrashing around on stage, menacingly stomping its feet (albeit in time to the music), and bellowing like a train at a signal crossing. He was terribly concerned that we were about to be caught in a Brass Band Stampede.
I assured Kit of the safety of his person, and pointed out the emergency evacuation route (just in case I was wrong). He then settled back happily to enjoy the rest of the concert, secure in the knowledge that the beast on stage was not a Fierce Yellephant, but in fact a human with a gigantic brass nose adornment.