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Pop: A Memoir

 As my son approaches his 2.5 birthday, I find our lives are overwhelmed by Cocomelon.


This is a series of scripted televised songs for children. I don't know how the songs entered our lives, but they won't leave. They're like crack. You have pulsing rhythms and a literally nonstop chorus of soft giggling. (The giggling is just a little creepy -- and it makes me think of porn, the way the quiet sighing is added on top of the visuals, in "post-production.")

The baby-protagonists in Cocomelon have large "Charlie Brown" heads, and they walk in clumsy ways, as actual toddlers walk.

If Cocomelon has a plot, that plot concerns the small crises in the life of JJ, a tiny kid with issues. These are his issues. His mother shows up late for a special school edition of "Winter Show and Tell." He feels nervous on the first day of Kindergarten. He has a friend who struggles with the jump-rope. ("Someone's in my head, saying NOT A CHANCE! Someone's in the mirror, telling me I CAN'T!")

A part of me admires Cocomelon, because crises aren't minimized. When JJ goes to the doctor, the chorus doesn't sing IT WON'T HURT! Instead, craftily, the chorus says YOU MIGHT NEED A SHOT. BUT DO NOT FEAR....IT WON'T HURT....A LOT..... (Someone on the writing staff deserves a Peabody.)

Also, JJ's first day of Kindergarten isn't a full success: The writers really linger over the painful moment when Mom leaves. JJ gets teary, and we have to confront that. As JJ works through his day, I imagine a Sondheim tune plays in his head, a song of ambivalence: "You're sorry.....grateful....regretful.....happy...." And that's life.

Do I need new hobbies? You said it, not me. This is what presently fills my day.
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