Recently, because of a shift in our appointment schedule, our days opened up to allow us an opportunity for our youngest teenager to do some volunteering at the church where my husband serves as the Director of Traditional Music. Our church hosts a local program once a week—Mills River Life Enrichment Center (or MRLEC), a nondenominational ministry for the senior adults in our community. On that day, our youngest girl has been helping out in various roles, including helping to serve lunch, delivering door prizes to participants, and, her favorite, handing out the snack bag prizes to winners of the once-a-month BINGO game. BINGO is both the senior adults’ favorite programming as well as our girl’s; she loves getting to hand out the gift bags and play a few BINGO cards.
Because BINGO is only once a month, the other meetings involve either music or helpful presentations focused on providing technology or other good information to those who attend. At a recent program, the day involved Oldies Music with Geriatric Jukebox, a couple who play and sing music together, providing fun songs and great harmonies. For a teenager, many of the song selections are new to her ears, and one left her laughing and curious—Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. If, like our teen, you are not familiar with this 1960 ditty sung by Brian Hyland, it’s a novelty song that tells the story of a rather shy young woman who wears a fairly skimpy bikini to the beach who is afraid to be seen in her swimsuit.
Our girl asked us a few times how such a song was considered “church appropriate” given the girl’s attire and the number of times we are regaled with the refrain, She wore an Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini followed by descriptions of her staying first in the locker room, then wrapped in a blanket, and finally in the ocean, always afraid to come out from where she is. Having just attended a youth lock-in, where one movie was discovered to be not quite as “church appropriate” for the tweens in the audience, and was therefore swapped out for a better option. Obviously, the difference was not as clear to her right away, though we finally explained that those in the Geriatric Jukebox audience were already familiar with this toe-tapping song and it was a bit of nostalgia for them.
Still, our girl found the song lyrics probably as surprising initially as audiences tuned into their radios in the 1960s. But lyrics aside, this isn’t our girl’s kind of music, and so she laughed at the selections she’d heard during her volunteering, and every now and again, I’ve just had to search out the “Bikini song” on Spotify and hit play at random times, just to see the look on our girl’s face and hear her over-the-top response of, “Noooooooo!” as she dissolves into laughter.
This sort of sneaky humor works well especially if one has an Echo Dot or a shared Spotify plan. On more than one occasion I have employed my friend, Alexa, to play a surprise music selection, including Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. On a different occasion, when my oldest had retired to her room during the Christmas season, leaving her iPad downstairs as she listened to music in her earbuds upstairs, I conspired to cue up Last Christmas by Wham! Like her sister with Alexa playing an unsolicited tune, our oldest was convinced something was wrong with either Spotify or her iPad or both. She did let us know in no uncertain terms that had I chosen to do this during the annual Whamageddon, she would have acted in a not so Christmas-sprity way.
One of the things I love and appreciate about these two funny young women is their laughter. I enjoy their puns and their “bad” dad jokes and their well-crafted original memes. The sound of their laughter is something I truly adore and I find it time well spent when we find ourselves in the midst of silliness and terrible puns and things that make us laugh, including Instagram reels and outtake videos from favorite movies. No matter the day it’s been, it’s always a good thing when we can share an itsy bitsy teenie weenie bit of fun and frivolity.