This morning, to put my students in the proper frame of mind to write with deep feeling (sadness and/or joy), I brought out the big guns. Sam Cooke. We listened to his rendition of "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen." We all exhaled. Then I hit them with Aracelis Girmay's poem, "Here." We all exhaled twice more, and then they dug in to write about some of their most intensely emotional experiences. It was kind of an amazing session. They are kind of amazing kids.

After the workshop, I collected Jocelyn from kindergarten and we headed home. I popped in the Sam Cooke CD to listen to on the drive.

Sam Cooke sang, "This is a mean old world to try and live in, all by yourself." Jocelyn and I listened, feeling in Sam Cooke's voice what a mean old world it is. After a few moments, Jocelyn piped up. "Dad?" she said.

"Yeah?"

"This song reminds me of that video song."

That video song? I tried to remember any music videos we had watched recently. Over the weekend I had cued up a couple of things on YouTube as a countermeasure against the latest Kidz Bop 80s Gold CD that Jocelyn's older sister had insisted on buying with Christmas money. I'd shown them some Go-Gos, some A-ha. "Huh?" I said.

"That one about how the moon is following me."

Oh. She was talking about the video for "The Shadow Government" by They Might Be Giants. It's pretty great. The moon shoots lightning from its eyes to destroy angry police automatons. We'd watched it together twice, over a year ago. What possible connection could it have to Sam Cooke? I started singing in my head. "Where is the shadow government / when you neeeeed it? / Where is the shadow government? / It's a bad, bad world." Aah.

"You mean because this song says it's a mean world and that one says it's a bad world?"

"Yeah."

As often happens, the solution to one mystery led to a deeper mystery. Why would these pronouncements about the world stick in her head and forge an instant connection?

I don't think most reasonable parents would find this troubling. But I was a little alarmed. Possibly my morning's workshop had made me especially attuned to the depths of grief children can feel, from which we can be powerless to spare them. I had seen a girl hand me her poem literally gasping for breath simply from the act of writing it. I had seen a boy no older than eleven stand up before a room of 50 people and read a devastating poem about family separation.

"Jocelyn," I asked, "do you think it's a mean world and a bad world?"

"No," she said. "It's a wonderful world." I exhaled. But why "wonderful"? I didn't think she was quoting the Louis Armstrong classic, because I couldn't remember ever playing it for her. Why did I play my children songs about mean, bad worlds and not about wonderful worlds? What kind of father was I? These questions soon gave way to others.

"It's a wonderful world," she said, "and that's why I always draw blue and yellow M's."

"Huh?"

Scott Beal is Dzanc Books Writer-in-Residence at Ann Arbor Open School and a stay-at-home dad.

Note: if you click this link, you can hear Sam Cooke's voice singing "Mean Old World," but you will also be subjected to images of Taylor Hicks. Is the trade-off worth it? Yes, but only just.

Moon image from "This Might Be A Wiki: the They Might Be Giants knowledge base" -- http://tmbw.net/wiki/The_Shadow_Government