It’s amazing how what I thought was history, is still a current event. Storytelling is how history is preserved, whether spoken aloud, written, or recorded through visual arts. What surprises me though, is when my daughter does something I used to do as a kid, but it’s not anything I ever shared with her. (This is a good reminder of how much our kids are learning from other sources!)

For example, she came into my room this morning and started singing, “Miss Susie had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell, Miss Susie went to heaven, and the steamboat went to hell-o operator…”

Hello is right! Now I probably should’ve shook my finger at her and told her that rhyme wasn’t polite, but I went right on singing every word as if I’d just sang it yesterday.

Later on, she was making up some silly rhyme and asked what rhymes with twelve. “Elves!” she shouted in response to her own question. Then she knelt down into her Crocs and says, “Look momma! I’m an elf!” We used to do the same thing!

Then that prompted me to think of how we used to lie on our backs and hang our heads off the sides of the bed, cover our faces from nose to hair with a bandana, draw a face on our chins, and then put on a silly skit like that. Maybe I’ll show her that trick next Throwback Thursday.

I guess even those who do know history are destined to repeat it.