Hot and cold

"Do you know this song?" asked the kids in my Tuesday evening group last week. They played some catchy pop thing that, effettivamente, I vaguely recalled having heard on the radio at some point or other.

"Sure, yeah," I replied, not wanting to seem ignorant about my own culture. I quickly listened for one of the repeated lines ("you're hot, then you're cold") and made a mental note to Google it later.

"Can we do it next week?" they asked enthusiastically. Three sets of ten-year-old eyes looked pleadingly up at me.

"Um... sure," said I, hoping that this would magically turn me into the hip, cool teacher. (Now that I think of it, this is probably similar to when you're a child and you agree to do whatever the cool kids ask of you in hopes that it will move them to accept you. Hm...)

It transpires that the song in question was "Hot 'n' cold" by Katy Perry. I don't understand why she spells her name like that. Anyway, though, it is not 100% appropriate, but a promise is a promise. (And, of course, I really want to be the cool teacher.) And it has some good opposites in it. So I figured we'd focus on the refrain and not pay attention to the rest and life would be good.

I hadn't counted on the fact that certain words are just easier to say than others, though. And once kids say a bad word, it's almost worse if you point it out to them and tell them not to say it. And that's why, after a few run-throughs during which we were assiduously learning the opposites in the refrain, I found myself listening to three Italian ten-year-olds belting out:

"You rrreeimumblesss like a BITCH. Rahwohnoo."

Oh, dear.