Mike

Ball

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August 4, 2008

Busking a Magic Dragon

I spent all day yesterday “busking.”

Busking is an activity that involves whaling away on a guitar or a banjo while trying to sing loudly enough to be heard over the sounds of passing Harley Davidsons and pedestrians shrieking into cell phones. Usually in the key of D.

Me, not the pedestrians or the Harleys.

I was hired to provide street entertainment in the nearby city of Plymouth as part of “Kidpalooza,” an event organized by the area merchants to provide a fun day downtown for families with young children. I sang “Aiken Drum,” “Little White Duck,” “Shake My Sillies Out,” and “We Are Going To Be Friends” for hundreds of children who had their faces painted with bunny rabbit noses and whiskers. 

I had a lot of fun. As far as I could tell, the kids did too, and they were amazingly creative when I had them doing things like inventing the components of Aiken Drum’s wardrobe. At one point, they had him wearing pants made of spaghetti and a belt made of whipped cream, which would raise some interesting possibilities in the event of a sudden cloudburst.

Throughout the day, it struck me how appreciative and polite the kids were. They participated and sang along to the best of their ability. They clapped at the end of each song. And then they all thanked me before moving on to see the jugglers and the stilt walkers.

Most of the adults were every bit as gracious as their children, but with a few of them I was not so fortunate. Through an entire set and two encores, one pair of mothers carried on a conversation over their children’s heads at a volume that completely drowned out the banjo. This was surprising to me, since anyone who has ever heard me play my banjo knows that you would have a hard time drowning it out by crashing a B-52 into a cymbal factory.

Then, on three separate occasions, an adult decided to muscle through the circle of kids while I was in the middle of singing a song to ask me where they were “supposed to get the free stuff.” Each time this happened it took me off guard, so I just shrugged and kept on singing. These people apparently felt it was pretty rude of me not to stop the song to answer their question, since they all gave me unpleasant looks and stalked away.

One woman tapped me on the shoulder, startling me into stopping the song, to ask me if I would give her son banjo lessons.

I found it interesting that by far the most popular song I did for each group was “Puff The Magic Dragon,” the charming Peter, Paul and Mary song from the early 1960s. The first time I sang it, though, I noticed the suddenly-sad looks on the faces of the kids when we got to the last part, where:

His head was bent with sorrow, green scales fell like rain.

Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.

Without his lifelong friend, Puff could not be brave,

So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave.

It took me back to the days when my son Patrick was about three years old and I first sang “Puff” for him. He simply refused to accept that final image of the dragon defeated and destroyed by the adulthood of his friend, Jackie Paper. So, every night at bedtime for the next few years, Patrick and I would invent adventures for Puff and his new friend, coincidentally named Patrick.

So with each group of kids on the street, I would keep on playing after that sad last verse and invite my young audience to help me come up with a new friend for Puff. Every time but one, a child would shout out his or her own name, and then I would repeat the first verse of the song with that name in it. This always brought back the smiles.

But my favorite moment of the day came when a little girl, about five years old, pointed to her younger brother and shouted his name. After hearing the revised first verse she beamed a huge smile at me, thanked me and wished me a wonderful afternoon. Then, as she followed her parents off down the street, she threw her arm around her little brother, drew him close, and said, “Wow! Did you hear that? You were in a song!”

I wonder if that little girl gives lessons.

Copyright © 2008, Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.