Someday I’m Going To Murder The Bugler

My mind has developed this odd twist.  I will often wake up with a song going over and over in in my mind.  I call it my Song De Jour.  Often it is a long-forgotten song I learned in my childhood, that I haven’t thought of for years.  In order to get it out of my mind, I have to sing it out loud, usually to Wendy, and it is sometimes kind of fun to reminisce about old songs and old times.  Usually after sharing my song de jour, it leaves my mind and I can think of other things.

This morning the song was rather strange and one I doubt I have even thought of for 60 years or so.  I think it may have come from some old World War I comedic army movie that my parents remembered.  Here it is.

     Someday I’m going to murder the bugler.
     Someday you’ll wake up and find him dead.
     For the heart is full of woe, just to hear the buglar blow,
     “You’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get up,
     you’ve got to get up, this morning.”

     Someday I’m going to murder the bugler.
     Someday you’ll wake up and find him dead.
     And then I’ll get that other pup,
     The one who wakes the bugler up,
     And spend the rest of my life in bed.

Dorothy and I would change the last line to “And spend the rest of your life in jail.”

I sang it to Wendy, and it began to leave my mind as expected. Then my thoughts turned to one of my mother’s rules, this was that you never point a gun, or anything resembling a gun, or anything pretending to be a gun (or weapon, probably including bow-and-arrow or knife) at any other human being.

This was a rule that was ABSOLUTE.  It was something a member of our family NEVER, NEVER EVER did.

When I was with my friends, this rule sure ruined the little boy games of soldiers or cowboys and Indians.  And my mother would have been absolutely appalled and sickened by today’s video games, and would have applied the same prohibition to them.

Somehow this rule impressed me that there was something very sacred about human life, and that we should not even play-act about something that might put these lives at risk.  I think that this was a valuable parenting strategy, that should be utilized in our day to teach this same lesson to our young people and our family.