Mind Jumps

This morning, I was singing Hamilton to myself (in my head) and started thinking about an article I had read about the musical – how it’s introducing musical theater to a whole new generation. Specifically, I was thinking about one part where the article mentioned how, similar to Rent, a lot of people end up listening to the soundtrack over and over and eagerly wish to know what comes in between the songs. (This has happened to me. With Rent and Hamilton.)

For some reason, this made me think of Mary Poppins, the musical, and how if you listen to the songs you can’t really know what the plot is about. It’s not a song-driven musical, really. I love Mary Poppins – it’s so fun. But the songs aren’t the best part (the set design was – pretty sure I wrote some livejournal post about it back in the day when I first watched it.)

Then I started thinking about supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, which I still can’t spell without looking up. (Didn’t have that one third grade teacher who made everyone learn how to spell it.) And thought about kids’ obsessions with long words – shoutout Walter and Jem Blythe, Anne of Ingleside, learning long words in the dictionary so they can use them as insults. And short words – like a, I…. And are there any other one-letter words?

Does O count? As in “O, say do you see/By the dawns early light”? Which reminds me of Ramona from Beezus and Ramona and Ramona the Pest, who mistakenly believes there is such thing as a “dawnzer”. Also reminds me of when my third grade class put on a mini skit of Ramona’s party and I learned what a fig Newton was. 

Beverly Cleary was great. I think there’s another story from Ramona about her being a sheep during a Christmas pageant, that’s in a random anthology of children’s Christmas stories my family owns. 

So anyways, that’s how my mind jumped from Hamilton to Beverly Cleary and Christmas this morning during the drive to BART. Jet lag messes you up, man.