For eight weeks we took the baby to swim class, by which I mean "swim" "class." Parents and assorted relatives toted the little tots around the shallow end of the YMCA pool while singing nursery rhymes and silly camp songs, with a break for five minutes of "free time," which meant the babies gummed chlorinated plastic toys until it was time to put them back. Ostensibly, the class taught baby to be comfortable in the water, but mostly it was just cute and it was nice to have a regular routine on Saturday mornings for a few weeks.

Ther was one part of the class though that was unusually stressful, and it was "Old MacDonald." Every single time, the singing and performance of this song was an unmitigated disaster.

You know "Old MacDonald." He's got a farm. There are animals on the farm and they make noises. Well, for swim class, the animals all had to be animals that lived in water (get it?) And, it was an interactive game, so that each parent had to suggest an animal.

Every single time this was a total and complete mess. A lot of people got it, to be sure, but each class, at least one person missed the bus. You'd hear "crab!" or "shark!" or "jellyfish!" and then..."Cow!"

It didn't help that each time this did happen, the teacher would sort of roll her eyes and laugh and proceed with mimicking what cow might do in the water (moo and splash), making it clear that somebody messed up. So there was a definite sense of awkwardness each time someone failed to heed the rules. Imagine my shame when my own dad, who was usually handling our own child, came forth with "mouse!" in his first class. His excuses are that a.) he didn't hear the instructions (but I think one would have noticed that Old MacDonald's farm seemed a little damp and thus pick up on the pattern) and b.) there is a mouse-fish (which I doubted he realluy meant.)

There was one day that was a bigger mess than usual. Out of the eight or so people in the class, we had one "cow" and two "fish" (not a catfish or an angelfish or a flying fish--just "fish," which mean two versions of "Swim swim here and a swim swim there...")

I have no idea why this song, which was sung every single class, posed such a challenge to people or why this bothered me so very much. We even had brainstorming ideas in the car on the way to class on what to suggest: Crab? Catfish? Penguin? Pufferfish? And we had to have backups as well, in case one classmate "stole" one of our ideas before we could use it.

In the last class, instead of finishing on a triumphant note, someone suggested something useless like "bird."  We also got a "polar bear," which I accepted in that polar bears do dwell in water, at least part-time, and at least it was new.

Maybe the people in the class who acted like they didn't get it were just messing with everyone else. But maybe "Old MacDonald" was just asking too much of new parents. You can sign up for the class, get the kid to the YMCA, get dressed, get yourself in the pool, but it ends there. You want an appropriate, clever recommendation for the Waterworld version of "Old MacDonald"? Nope. Fish. Cow. That's all you get.