Oh, Susanna. Oh the humanity.

My parents were kind enough to buy Samson a CD with 914 of the most annoying songs ever recorded, by children who I can only guess studied at the Osmond/Brady/Partridge school of vocal training.

So we've got that going for us on car trips now.

Of course, there is only one song from the whole compilation that Samson wants to hear: Oh, Susanna. He can (and unfortunately, does) listen to it over and over and over again.

Let me explain: It all started --- as so much does in our house --- with Laurie Berkner. On her DVD, they do a version of Oh, Susanna. Fair enough, but somehow this became Samson's musical obsession.

[I should note here that I bear no small responsibility for this turn of events. One morning, in a fit of what I can only describe as "look-ma-no-hands-ism," I put young Samson wise to the fact that the one and only song I can play on harmonica is Oh, Susanna. He looked at me with the kind of adoration usually reserved for dump trucks and bulldozers (bulldozers). And I loved every second of it. This fact will not keep me from complaining, but I felt like I should be honest with you.]

Anyway, the song on the CD is 1 minute and 15 seconds long. Which means that on those trips that he remembers the CD is in the car (which is essentially every car trip), we get to measure time and distance in 1:15 increments.

The unit is called, appropriately enough, a Susanna. For instance, it's about 3 Susannas from our house to the park if we hit all the lights right. It's probably only two to Jacob's house (which means we should be walking). I haven't clocked it, but I'd bet it's about 8 or 9 Susannas to my office.

At the end of the month we head up to the Catskills for a long weekend and a family party. I'm going to start lobbying Vicki now about "misplacing" the disc. That's easily a 250-Susanna trip.

And for the life of me, I can't figure out what the song means.