silly songs

One of the things that I have always loved about Gerard is the way that he loves to sing.  He won't readily admit that he loves to sing-- he's spent enough time around professional musicians that he has no desire to flaunt his untrained voice.  But he does love to sing, and I know that he does because he sings all the time.

I come from a musical family and have studied music for most of my life, so I was delighted when I was first exposed to Gerard's penchant for song.  Early in our relationship, he would often sing to me in the mornings, while we were lying together in bed after a sweet sleep or early morning lovemaking.  He'd usually choose old jazz standards, or songs from Broadway musicals.  It was enchanting.

I have an absurd memory for lyrics, and Gerard not so much.  Over time this has developed into a dynamic wherein Gerard begins a song with the correct lyrics and then gradually devolves into some crazy bastardization of the original rhymes, and then looks at me between his giggles for whatever the correction might be.

Other times, he'll look up the lyrics to a song on the computer, and then sing his way through the whole song.  Usually once he's done he'll turn the monitor towards me and say, "Now you do it.  Can you play your guitar too?"  He loves to hear me sing and play, and sometimes will happily take care of all the dinner dishes by himself if I'm serenading him with my voice, the guitar, or the piano while he does so.  Of course, it's more fun for me when he's singing along rather than just listening.

Most entertaining of all is what seems to be Gerard's favorite type of singing: he improvises spontaneous song parodies.  (For those of you not familiar with this idiom, it involves taking the tune and lyrical structure of a well-known song and changing the words to something else entirely.)  Sometimes he sings these to the dog, with words usually focused on the themes of the dog being hungry and Gerard coming to feed her.  But most of the time he sings the song parodies to me.  The subject matter of these song parodies is typically related to how much Gerard loves me, and eventually that tends to turn into, or at least mention, how much he loves my bottom.

Here's an example (to the tune of "Down in the Valley"):
I love my Aureeeeeeeeeeeelia
I love her so
I love her bottom
I want her to know

Another recent song (performed while pinning me down to the bed) used some villain-like melody that I didn't recognize and went as follows:
I'm a scoundrel who steals body parts in the middle of the night
And I'll take your left arm, your breast, and your bottom to do with what I like!


As I write this, I'm struck by how odd it feels to be telling this story.  It sounds like the sort of thing that you'd watch in a dopey sitcom.  And yet it brings endless delight and giggles to our life.  I imagine that one day Gerard will be making up cute little songs for our child, and that that child will grow up with an appreciation for music and the creative use of words and rhymes.  What could be nicer?