At least a couple times a week, a pink rubber bracelet adorns my right wrist. Written in huge green letters is the name of my favorite tiny-tot pop star, Justin Bieber. Though this middle school millionaire doesn’t need any of my money, I shelled out the three dollars and fifty cents to support his work. I have obviously gotten a lot of guff for it, but I really don’t care. I love the Biebs.
For years before returning to college, I worked in preschools. If you have never spent forty hours a week surrounded by four-year-olds, you might not know that pre-schoolers love to sing, and they sing, ad infinitum, whatever they heard on mom or dad’s iPod on the way to school. Imagine if you will, the following lyrics from the mouths of students who have only recently graduated from toddler-hood.
“I kissed a girl and I liked it. Hope my boyfriend don’t mind it.”
“How’d I turn my shirt inside out? … we’re all gettin’ hosed tonight”
“I see you drivin round town … and I’m like ‘forget you’” (If you’re lucky. Some kids' parents have the unedited version, and most four-year-olds are only just learning the concept of “cuss words”)
“Girl look at that body … I’m sexy and I know it”
“Last Friday night We went streaking in the park Skinny dipping in the dark Then had a ménage à trois”
“And I was like,“Baby baby baby Oh! Baby Baby Baby NO!” these songs are inappropriate for you! People who were recently three years old should not be singing about threesomes!
About this time, a friend dared me to create The Bieber Day Tweets, a project in which I created a Justin Bieber station on Pandora, listened to it straight for 12 hours and tweeted the experience live. Given that half the space on my iPod is taken up with Marilyn Manson and Nirvana, (what can i say? I love the 90s) I have to say that this was torture, but when one doesn’t drink, interesting bar-bets are hard to come by. I did get 4 new followers out of the ordeal so, I guess that’s a win. What I discovered during this aural assault, was that Bieber’s lyrics, though sometimes with a misogynist bent (referring to a girl as a prized possession) were largely family friendly. Annoying and repetitive as it was, I could listen to my class singing ‘Baby, baby baby” and “One less lonely girl” without my stomach turning. I quickly added the songs to the Center Time Playlist, along with the discovery of Taylor Swift’s song about short skirts and t-shirts and other karo-syrupy teeny-bopper love songs. There’s really not much that makes a stressful day in kinder-land brighter than a chorus of boys, decked out in their dramatic play center finest, belting Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me” In honor of taking my classroom from a pint sized musicall orgy to a place I was not disgusted to work, I support the Bieber. Baby baby baby, Oh Thank You!
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