A Moral Dilemma

I was on the bus home on Friday evening with E in tow.  She hadn't slept all day (are you seeing a pattern here?) and whilst we were on the bus she had a massive meltdown (another pattern here).  During such meltdowns often the best way to placate her is with food.  I gave her all the rice-crackers and oat bars in my bag, and my personal supply of dried mango (my very favourite) and still there was no appeasing her.  This led me to the only other thing in the world known to placate her - singing.

This turned in to a bit of moral dilemma for me.  Do I a) subject my fellow bus passengers to the sound of E having a particularly angry meltdown, or b) subject my fellow bus passengers to the dulcet tones of me singing?

Please bear in mind that the bus takes over an hour to get home on a good night, two hours on a bad night.  It's also a pretty busy bus in the evening, full of rather tired and weary commuters wishing a speedy and quiet passage home.  I've been on that bus before when E has had a meltdown and you get 'the looks' from passengers, 'the looks' that say that you must be an awful mother if you can't stop your child screaming blue murder.  You also get the mutterers.  The mutterers are my favourite.  They say to other passengers what your child needs to stop crying (most likely a dummy) at just a loud enough volume so they know that you can hear them, but so that you know they are not directly talking to you.

Oh, and one final completely incidental detail - I am what is known as completely tone deaf.  The mister and I quite often play a game where I hum a song and he has to guess what it is.  He can quite often guess 50 times and not know what it is.  When I tell him the song that I'm humming at least half an hour of hysterical laughing often follows suit from him.  My favourite one to hum is Under Pressure by Queen.  Quite a distinctive song.  But no, not when it passes through my vocal chords.

Apparently my singing puts the mister on edge, like nails on a blackboard.  And it's not just the mister that doesn't like my singing - I got kicked out of the school choir, aged nine, rather unceremoniously, for bringing down the rest of the choir.  Who knows how I even got in that choir in the first place.  And one Christmas, at Brownies, aged eight, they asked me to sing Silent Night.  They stopped me not even half way through and did not ask me to sing again.  

But, lo and behold, E is the only person in the whole world that appreciates and likes my best singing voice.  She will even fall asleep to it on occasion.  So I am fully making the most of this appreciation now, until she tells me to stop singing at an older age.  As such I quite often give concerts at home to my very best audience of one.  I've yet to get a standing ovation from her, as she can't quite stand up by herself yet, but I know that day will come!  And I will be the happiest mother there ever was!

So, anyway, here I was on the bus, thinking what should I do?  What is the lesser of the two evils?  And so, after a few minutes of pondering, it came to be that I held my baby and sang my heart out in public for the first time since 1990, in front of a joyous bus full of West Lothian residents tired after a whole week of work.

I am loved on that bus. Truly loved.  

I think they especially loved my rendition of Baa Baa Black Sheep.  Row Row Your Boat also went down well - I think the pinnacle for them was when I sang it for the 43rd time.  I had really nailed it by then you see.

xx