The Ballad of the Shape of Things is one of those songs that I learned very young and from my cousins, so I did not know who recorded it. Another “dead girl song” only this one is a “dead guy song”. I loved the puns: “They say he died of the chickenpox. In part I must agree, one chick too many had he.” I also liked songs with words I didn’t know: transom, in this one. We were fairly bloodthirsty kids and happily learned songs about death, unfaithful lovers, murder, betrayal, noble suicide to save the highwayman, and so forth. My Darling Clementine, another dead girl song. We had a very educational childhood in song.

We needed the triangular “garment thin that fastens on with a safety pin” explained at the end of the song, because the cloth diapers we’d experienced were rectangular. I find memorizing things that rhyme and especially if there is a story and a tune, much easier than memorizing the varied side effects of drugs such as ACE inhibitors. The story behind the side effects escapes me, though maybe there is one! Think of that, a ballad of the ACE inhibitors, with each one having its individual good and bad effects! I am certain that I could make up a story, even if we don’t really understand all the effects.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: triangle.

Here is a side effect song, though not quite what I have in mind.

The photograph is my sister Chris and me, at my father’s 70th birthday, 2008, taken by my friend Malene.