1999 december 02lie la liewe walked into the house tonight to hear paul simon singing the boxer. we'd watched the year without a santa claus earlier, and full of the spirit of christmas, and singing the snow miser/heat miser song we went out for a quick drive to look at christmas lights. we oohed and aahed for about an hour, singing like yuletide idiots whenever we weren't oohing and aahing, and then came home. there was some sports special on, hence mr simon singing his song. when i was a child, we listened to simon and garfunkel all the time. they were favorites of my mother, along with glen yarborough and leonard cohen and other folklike singers of the era. while we children were extremely fond of yarborough's down in the jungle, what with the monkeys and all [the evolution aspect completely escaped us at the time], jubilee and i, and jubilee's best friend absolutely loved the boxer. we'd put the record on and then the two of them would climb onto the chartreuse upright piano [yes, chartreuse] in the front room, strategically draping themselves over the corners. i'd sit on the piano bench and then we'd all sing along. this was a fairly calm and quiet event, full of much heartfelt emotion but very little movement, until the last chorus of lie-la-lies. once that started we would all jump onto the floor and begin with the swinging arm movements: two sliding steps to the right while the arms made a giant circle, then two sliding steps to the left with more arm. we thought we were wonderfully coordinated while my brothers thought we were wonderfully ridiculous and my parents just shook their heads in wonder that they had created such odd little girls. we didn't care one bit, we were modern dance masters. i think we may have watched too many musical variety shows with the tom jones dancers. would never lie even while la-ing, claire
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