Head, shoulders, knees, and toes

When something comes to mind as I consider topics for these weekly musings, I tend to go with it and see where it takes me. So, when the glimmer of a childhood song teased my brain, I did what anyone in search of a piece of information would do, and googled the phrase and found the cutest video of cartoon children exercising. It wasn’t quite the tune I remembered, but close enough. My recollection wasn’t that parents or teachers in my day used the song to get us moving, except maybe for coordination and rhythm, but the modern version combined exercise with the song which seemed like a good thing.

Perhaps I was reminded of the song because I’m in that phase of life more focused on icing or replacing those body parts than identifying them. Well, except the head. There is no head transplant when Alzheimer’s disease is the diagnosis. There is no corrective surgery for how we have deteriorated into so far left and so far right (not necessarily portions of the brain). It was painful to watch my dad’s head slip into the world of dementia. I fear a similar fate, but don’t know whether the fear is that I’ll know it’s happening or that I won’t know. I fear the fate of our world where the rhetoric needs to be iced down and we all need some type of therapy.

“He’s got a good head on his shoulders” is a nice complement, as is “she’s head and shoulders above the rest.” Here in Chicago we are the city of the big shoulders. As a culture and a country we once had broader shoulders. All of those hint at a morality that is not mentioned in the song. Maybe we need a second verse that is ‘head, shoulders, heart and soul.’

Marilyn