My bonnie lies over the ocean

A funny:

One of the songs I thought to sing to Josephine was "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean." I had the first part down:

My Bonnie lies over the ocean
My Bonnie lies over the sea
My Bonnie lies over the ocean

But then I couldn't remember the melody of the next line. I knew the words, but I couldn't attach them to the right notes. I could also remember everything after that one hateful line:

Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me, to me
Bring back, bring back
Bring back my Bonnie to me

Egads! It's not exactly a difficult tune. This is, I thought, my personal idea of hell. After all, I have a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in opera singing. But I could not, for the life of me, think of how to sing the line "Oh bring back my Bonnie to me". This discomfort made me sing it even more incorrectly -- and over and over -- in an attempt to find the melody. I could almost hear it, but for some reason I couldn't get it out of my mouth.

So finally I called my dad -- known for his twist but not so much for his vocal stylings -- and had him sing it. Well, he didn't quite have it either, but we went back and forth and back and forth, and I finally found it. We laughed about it, and he, of course, wondered about all that money spent on voice lessons and college degrees -- sigh. It took me another two days of singing it wrong then right to finally be able to do it consistently. What a triumph.

I was so excited to sing it to Josephine and to rock and sway with her just like the very ocean itself. I could imagine her big toothless grin and fancied it might even earn me a giggle. I sang it for the first time correctly straight through and what did she do? She burst into tears.