Can you see people ...

Sailing so slowly, high up in the starry sky ...

Through some quirk in the way my brain works I have this odd capacity to remember just about every song I ever learned as a child. I mean I can recall songs my grandfather tunelessly sang to me when I was 5 years old. (A red fox ran away; he ran so far away; his mother had no telephone...) I still can sing the "Hello" song that Miss Prine taught us in kindergarten. The gruesome stop-look-listen ditty Miss Loverin taught us in grade one? (Though you can buy many a ball, you never can buy a new leg.) Of course I remember it, along with every song I learned from the second grade music book.  Camp songs. Sunday School songs. Oh, and all those fairy tales set to music that I had on 33 rpm vinyl.  And don't forget my favorite musical soundtracks: Mary Poppins, Music Man, The Sound of Music.

Sometimes the tunes in my early piano books had lyrics set to them, too. Whenever I see the full moon, I remember this one:

Big moon, bright moon
Sailing so slowly, high
Up in the starry sky
Big moon, bright moon
Can you see people
So little as I?

Yes, and I can sing it, too. What a total waste of brain space.

Comments

[Trista]

What are the rest of the "red fox" lyrics!! I want to remember them so badly!

[kathlee]

I THINK the lyrics as I know them are from the (old, but still in print) John Thompson graded series for piano, the first grade book (which is the one after the introductory "Teaching Little Fingers to Play.")

How funny -- so this sticks in somebody else's mind, too!

kathleen

[purejuice]

i just googled these lyrics, and hit you! because i remember them too. can you remember the book they came from???

Well, I never quite thought of it that way. I suppose you are right!

[Figure_8]

Oh I have to disagree. It's so much better that you brain is full of tunes that can bring a smile to your face and perhaps others faces too than having a brain full of 1980s baseball stats