Pumped Up Kicks

This story has been on my list of HamannEggs stories for quite a while.  Since I haven’t been around the guys enough to get any actual material, I figured I’d dig this one up.

A few months ago, I rushed home to relieve Hannah from sitter duty.  The boys were in their usual pre bedtime craziness and they began begging me to play a song called “Run, better run.”

I had no idea what they were talking about.  I’ve gleefully leapt into the old man curmudgeon state of music appreciation where I decry anything not performed by John, Paul, George and Ringo.  It involves a lot me muttering, “It’s just a bunch of noise if you ask me…”

Hannah informed me the boys and she had been dancing to a song called “Pumped Up Kicks” by the band Foster the People earlier in the day.   Elijah and Luca begged me to buy it on my iphone and, pow, ninety nine cents later they were wiggling to the somewhat peppy, not all that annoying song.

As with all things they are into, the boys needed to consume it to the point where it loses all meaning.  On the 100^th or 200^th listen, I started to absorb the song.  Its lyrics are essentially from the perspective of a disturbed kid with homicidal thoughts.

Here’s the chorus:

“All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you better run, better run, outrun my gun.  All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you better run, better run, faster than my bullet.”

Hmm.  Was my babysitter filling my sons’ head with violence?  Was she secretly training them to become antisocial weirdoes?  I contemplated that while I watched a particularly brutal Star Wars battle with Eli and Luca.

I mentioned it to Diana and she said, “Yeah, but it’s such a catchy antisocial song.”

A few days later I was driving with the boys and they begged me to yet again play the song.  I listened to them sing along with the lyrics.

They sang, “All the other kids gonna run gonna run.  Gonna run gonna run with the other kids.  All the other kids gonna run with the other kids.”

In their minds, it wasn’t a homicidal antisocial song, it was about a bunch of kids who were out of breath.

I quickly corrected them.