The Wiggles were huge in my house.
And if you had a preschool-aged kid in the mid-Two Thousands, they were huge in your house, too.
Every day, I’d come home, and my daughter would be singing along with Anthony, Jeff, Greg, and Murray to one of the group’s mega-hits.
Like “Fruit Salad.”
You know it.
Fruit sa-lad . . .
Boom-boom-boom
Yum-my, yum-my.
Frickin’ genius.
You had to love these guys.
They were four Aussies who’d gotten together in the early-Nineties to promote the educational songs they’d written while studying to be preschool teachers.
At least, that was Anthony Field’s story, one of the cofounders.
You may recognize him from his time with The Cockroaches, the Australian pop band.
Or not.
Doesn’t matter.
What does matter is The Wiggles created songs and characters that kept kids in a hypnotic trance for thirty minutes every day.
So you could get a little peace and quiet.
Unless you were singing along with them.
As I usually was.
Those damn songs . . . they stuck. They were like fly paper on your brain.
Taylor Swift had nothing on these guys when it came to creating a catchy hook.
That was especially true of “Big Red Car.”
The guys would cruise around the Australian countryside in this giant toy car.
It was clearly being hauled around on the back of a flatbed, given the way Greg would flail his arms and not check his mirrors while was supposed to be driving.
But whatever.
The car made an appearance nearly every episode, to the tune of,
Toot-toot!
Chugga-chugga!
Big Red Car . . .
We’ll travel near
And we’ll travel fah-ah-ahrrrr!
It was a Wiggles go-to.
So it was no surprise my wife used that particular song to pitch the idea of taking our daughter to see The Wiggles Live! concert.
We were living in Boston, and the group was playing in nearby Worcester.
“Just think, you could see The Big Red Car . . . in person,” she said.
I wasn’t persuaded.
While I enjoyed singing along with the guys on TV, I had zero interest in driving somewhere to sit in an arena full of little kids on a Saturday afternoon.
Not until I had a kid of my own had I come to understand how much I loathed doing kid stuff.
Like going to a Wiggles concert.
“Come on,” my wife said. “They’ll probably have beer.”
Okay. If they have beer.
So, we loaded up our daughter and a bunch of kid gear and snacks the following Saturday and made the drive to the Worcester exhibition hall.
As hoped, there was beer.
And, as feared, a bunch of screaming preschoolers who couldn’t sit still for the freaking life of them.
Many were wearing stuffed dinosaur tails belted around their waists.
It was a nod to Dorothy the Dinosaur, one of the more popular Wiggles characters.
The tails were available for purchase at various kiosks outside the concert hall for the low, low price of fifty bucks or something absurd like that.
My daughter was wearing one, of course.
The kid was ready to party: Dinosaur tail on her ass, juice box in one hand, and a squeezy applesauce snack pack in the other.
I noticed there were a handful of other dads in the crowd, some nursing over-priced beers like I was.
We were all wearing a look that said, let’s just get this damn thing over with.
The moms were loosely corralling the kids and getting them pumped up for The Wiggles impending entrance.
Finally, the lights went down, and the announcer said, “And here they are . . . from The Land Down Under . . . Anthony, Greg, Jeff, and Murray . . . Boys and girls . . . The Wiggles!”
Little-kid screams engulfed the hall.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m thinking. Get it going already.
The far-left corner of the darkened stage was lit up with a spotlight, just as singing started from backstage.
Toot-toot!
Chugga-chugga!
Big Red Car . . .
Totally predictable, I thought. Of course, they’d lead with “The Big Red Car.”
Then, into the spotlight and onto the stage drove Anthony, Greg, Jeff, and Murray.
The Wiggles. In the actual Big Red Car.
I paused for a moment to take it all in. The car. The guys. The singing.
And, as I did, something weird happened to me.
I felt . . . delighted.
And, strangely, a little starstruck.
How could this be? I thought.
I had no inner child. And I absolutely did not like this kid stuff.
Sure, I believe I’d fairly judged The Wiggles on their creative merits. I respected their work, and I’d given them credit where it was due.
But none of that explained the odd feeling of joy that had overcome me.
I spent the rest of the concert belting out every word of every song, right along with the screaming preschoolers.
It was a surprisingly good time.
And totally unexpected.
It was nearly a week before my daughter and I came down from our Wiggles high.
Which may explain, I suppose, how The Wiggles grossed, like, $50 million a year.
Fine with me.
They earned every nickel.
Especially that Saturday afternoon in Worcester.
Thank you, Anthony, Greg, Jeff, and Murray.
Rock on, Mates,
Wherever you are.