When Generations Collide

My five year old recently discovered the soundtrack to The Sound of Music, which means I frequently find myself humming "I Have Confidence" or "My Favorite Things" while puttering around the house. In the same week she also fell in love with my old SchoolHouse Rock videotapes, causing "Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here" to be stuck in my head. And in the evenings we dance The Hokey Pokey along with Dan Zanes. The combination of musical styles is overwhelming, at best.

I think my head might explode soon.

Last night we listened to part of The Sound Of Music while lying in her room at bedtime. She has not seen the movie--and I think that much of it would not yet interest her--so I have had to explain the basics. (Picture a pagan GenX mom trying to explain nuns and convents and governesses and fathers-who-do-not-allow-singing. Yep.) So. When we got to the song about The Lonely Goatherd, I explained that the children were doing a puppet show. "At school?" she asked.
"No, at a party," I explained.
"With Maria?"
"Yes."
She thought about this for a minute, then asked, "But where was the dad? The guy who loved Maria?"
I started to say that he was watching the puppet show, but she interrupted me.
"I know, I know, " she said. "He was in the kitchen making dinner."