I finally figured out what it is about the song "The Wheels on the Bus" that bugs me so much. It's the verse that goes, "The driver on the bus says 'move on back!'" that has always gotten under my skin. The passing of Rosa Parks, I think, threw it into sharp relief for me.
Look, I'm not so steeped in my liberal arts education that I'm going to interpret the entire song as an homage to Jim Crow and denounce it as a tool of the white patriarchy indoctrinating young children with institutional blah blah blah. It's just that I finally feel like I have a reason - other than the fact that the tune makes me want to puncture my eardrums with an icepick - to dislike that song.
And because God has a sense of humor, naturally, my daughter got a toy school bus for Christmas, with little shape-sorting figures and interactive sound features. And it is one of her **favorite** toys **ever**. She likes nothing more than to press the little orange button where the "driver" sits, which makes her bus light up playing TWOTBGRAR. And she lights up right along with it, bouncing up and down and clapping her hands with the music.
When she's a little older and starts singing, I'm going to teach her a variation: "The old karmic wheel goes round and round, round and round, round and round..."