Growing Up in Santa Cruz

I took my younger son to a nearby local bookstore for their "Read Time" this morning.  The reader was a sweet older woman, with the perfect British accent that is necessary for a good story hour.  She was reading some book about a little boy pig who was always told to make messes and wear dirty clothes (because he's a pig of course), and who had always wanted some day to have a clean room and wear clean clothes (because he didn't fit in).  Anyway, at one point in the story the Mama Pig puts her son to bed with the familiar rhyme:

This little piggy went to market

This little piggy stayed home.

This little piggy had roast beef

But this little piggy had none.

And this little piggy cried "Wee," "Wee," "Wee," all the way home!

She paused here to ask the youngsters if they knew that poem too.  Their usual blank stares didn't tell her much, but one mom leaned over and pointed to her son saying, "He knows it with tofu."  I don't think the reader understood, so she repeated herself, "He knows it with tofu, not roast beef." (She could only bring herself to mouth the hideous words "roast beef").  At this point the employee understood, at least I'm sure more than this mom did, and repeated the poem with the more culturally sensitive changes:

This little piggy went to market

This little piggy stayed home.

This little piggy had TOFU

But this little piggy had none.

And this little piggy cried "Wee," "Wee," "Wee," all the way home!

I thought of insisting that my son knew it with "McDonald's greasy hamburgers" instead of tofu, but thought better of it an instant later.  She seemed too pleased.