I'm a Mannish Boy

To get to the summer camp I work at, Camp Hillard, in Scarsdale, New York, I take the subway into the Financial District from my apartment in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, and then catch a camp-rented school bus (in which I’m a bus captain) to get to Westchester.

Outside of myself, the others passengers on the bus are another bus captain, the driver, and ten campers, whose ages run from 5 to 9 years old.

To keep them distracted, we let them talk, squirt water bottle fans at each other, and listen to their iPods, although camp rules say we aren’t allowed to this. But for a quiet bus drive, I don’t really care.

A few days ago, while sitting next to an eight-year-old named Max, I noticed he was listening to his iPod, and I asked to take a look at it. At the time, I was also listening to mine, and he asked the same question.

He had an iPod Nano, so there were only about 20 songs on it, including “More Than a Feeling” by Boston, “Hit Me Baby (One More Time)” by Britney Spears, and, oddly enough, his favorite song of the moment, “The Vampires” by Paul Simon (Max was nice enough to warn me that there were swear words in the song—“I ain't giving you my fucking money”—but that I shouldn’t worry about it).

On mine, he got excited over three songs: “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse (which he claimed to be “the greatest song ever”), “Let It Be” by the Beatles, and “Mannish Boy” by Muddy Waters.

Why “Mannish Boy,” of which I have the The Last Waltz version of? I have no idea. But seeing an eight-year-old white boy singing, “Well, when I was a young boy, at the age of five/My mother told me, I’d be the greatest man alive,” well, there ain’t nothing in this world better than that.

Now let's see if he can master Howlin' Wolf.