I had this teacher in 4th grade and he misses Hammond.

She was great, she always would teach us these little songs that helped us to memorize things.

And his R was where Beaming Men, Being Verbs.

Half has had, Do does did, Shall will should would me my must, Can could.

Helping verbs, My mammals have fallen, Little bit have milked for the babies long.

Wormed, mother mammals.

Mammals obviously.

While these songs may not have been compositionally sophisticated,

they were effective, I still remember them.

But as I think back on those songs, it makes me think about how human beings tend to see the world.

We often see reality as a set of separate and distinct things that can be defined with lists and little songs that we can teach 4th graders.

We learn that a human being is another one of these classifications, another one of these lists.

A human being is a mammal.

The homo sapien species, more specifically.

Not only does it have all the characteristics of a mammal, but it has an upright, erect standing posture.

It has articulate speech.

It has these 5 senses of sight, hearing, smell, and touch and taste.

It has 23 pairs of chromosomes and so on.

But of course, not all homo sapiens have all of these things.

All the kids in my class in the 4th grade had all their limbs.

It never even occurred to me what that song about mammals might sound like to somebody who is missing their limbs.

Oh mammals have 4 limbs.

...