Mind Games

I begin each school day by asking my son to tell me the date. It's my way of trying to get him to pay more attention to the calendar. So far, his response is usually, "Ummm, I don't know." Sometimes he tries to guess, badly.

So I tell him the date and have him write it down. Today, as I announced, "It's October 9th," I realized it was John Lennon's birthday. Since my son is a Beatles fan like me, I announced that fact too.

He asked me, "How old would John Lennon have been today?" I quickly did the math and said, "Sixty-seven." Then I said, "No, wait, that can't be right." You see how much confidence I have in my mathematic abilities? It just didn't seem possible that John would've been that old today. But my calculations were correct. It really has been twenty-seven years since that terrible December day when a friend called me to say "Lennon is dead!"

We listened to a few Lennon and Beatles tunes to commemorate his birth. Even after all this time, many of his songs still sound fresh and vibrant. I love watching my kids discover all this great music from the past.

Children's musician Eric Herman has been thinking about John Lennon lately. He was recently honored as one of the finalists in the 2007 John Lennon Songwriting Contest for his classic "The Elephant Song." View the video here.

Congratulations, Eric, for writing such a great song and receiving such an amazing honor! I can just imagine that John would get a big kick out of your song. It has the kind of quirky humor he was famous for.

I highly recommend Eric's latest CD, Snail's Pace. You can read my review of it here.