there was a young man

Today we learned about limericks.

I don't know how it came up exactly—we were just driving to tennis lessons and chatting as we always do. The kids were asking really hard questions about things I didn't know the answers to (Note to self: must install voice-activated search engine in dashboard of car so can Google while driving)… and having heard, "Hmm, I don't know," a few too many times… my son changed the subject and said, "I liked that poem Dad told us about the man with a fork."

(Huh?)

"Um, what poem was that?"

"You know, the man with a fork… and something about pie."

"Ah!" I said. And promptly recited the whole limerick. Which, when summarised goes like this: Dude from Cork, comes to earth on fork, lands in pie, does die, and so on.

I was quite pleased I remembered it, and the kids were impressed (finally!). Then I said, "You know, Dad didn't make up that poem."

"No?"

"No, it's an old limerick."

"What's a limerick?"

And we were off and running. I told them the basic structure, and then made up terrible, I mean really terrible, limericks as examples.

There was a pretty good one about a cow and a whale, and some not very good ones about a man named Bob. Then the kids made up really silly ones about grass and…then we got to tennis. And I forgot all about limericks.

Until tonight at the kids' bedtime.

My son had minutes earlier been really distressed about a thought he'd had just before sleep (my kids suffer regular angst at night, as in: "a feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition or the state of the world in general", but we get through it).

As I was talking him down, talking him into calm, he said suddenly,

"Oh, I thought of a limerick, Mum. Do you want to hear it?"

"Sure," I said. (Not phased at all, I might add: I am used to strange and lovely mind shifts in my kids).

So, in his sweet voice my son recited,

"There once was a man named Robin,

Who lived in a shiny toboggan.

But it was too small,

So he went to the Mall,

And bought a bigger toboggan."

"Cool," I said.

Which it was. It really was.