With the DVD player in the car broken, what, goin' on several months now and Jeff not willing to kick up the quoted $2500 to get it replaced, ...

It'll just break again like it did before but without a warranty!¹

... I've resorted to playing my homemade CDs.

And I take requests from the kids!

When the Three Talkers are in the car, heck, they'll build a list of six or more songs that I gotta play, in-the-order-announced, regardless of what CD they're on.

Wouldn't it make more sense to play the songs sequentially?

Tim prefers the folk music, as I do, The Kingston Trio²: "Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing ..."

Kenny and Chris like The Coasters's Poison Ivy. What am I teaching them about women?!

Enjoying the song is almost less important than knowing the titles and queuing them up. So long as they can remember the title.

Recently, however, Chris couldn't remember and just whispered me an unsure lyric:

Can you play the song that says, "Free the muscle?"

Freeda Peeple?³

I had to admit to him that I hadn't any idea what song he wanted.

A day or two later, coming back from the beach, I wasn't taking requests from the kids but was just playing my own favorites. And Uncle Kracker's version of Drift Away came on. Chris informed me that this was the song that he had asked for on the previous occasion.

You found it, Mommy! This is the song I wanted.

And the misunderstood lyric is, "Free my soul."

Now, Kenny is the theological dynamo of the threesome, so it's not fair to compare the younger ones with him. Still, I'm appalled at their complete lack of natural inclination for spiritual things: Chris getting that lyric so wrong, and Tim asking innocently during Down in the River to Pray:

Mommy, what's a sinner?

Kenny answered before I could.

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¹ The warranty is a funny thing: the factory-installed player had a four-year warranty, same as the car, but the replacement player the repair shop put in two summers ago has only a 12-month warranty. That's why they'd rather replace than repair; the original warranty wouldn't be up 'til this October.

² Should I put Tom Dooley on a CD, he'd be in heaven.

³ Not a song I know beyond the kooky title but I can guess what it's about. 'Though Wiki says it was in Children of Men, maybe I remember it from there.