SEDONA, Ariz. — A fledgling lullaby composer was wracked with anxiety at a recent sold-out performance of his work when his melodies failed by leaving the audience of small children at rapt attention and fully awake, sources confirmed without the slightest hint of a Sandman visit.
“I’m a dozen songs in and there’s not a snore to be heard in this entire theater. Five thousand-some-odd kids out in the audience, and I’m cursed to have their undivided attention all of a sudden? What’s wrong with me?!” cried composer Ritchie Swinkroff, in a hushed tone. “I realized I’m whispering, which doesn’t even seem to matter at this point. I could be shouting bloody murder at the top of my lungs if I wanted to. You may as well consider me lull-and-void! Oh great, now they’re laughing uproariously at that clever joke. Strike me down now, universe!”
The babies in the audience were of no comfort to the sobbing performer onstage, with many voicing their surprisingly eloquent rage and confusion.
“I’m all ‘what da hell?’ Y’know? My mommy paid good money for this damn concert and this joker can’t even put me to sleep for a few seconds, even? I even gave the jabroni a head start by only drinking warm milk all morning, and EVERY morning for that matter. What gives?” rasped Billy Dunbar, a particular grizzled toddler in the audience. “I smell a hack, and he better get ready to have about a few hundred pacifiers chucked at his head from those of us who have developed the adequate collective motor functions of our limbs yet, that is.”
Original composer of “Rock-a-Bye Baby” Effie Crockett related that she doubted Swinkroff had what it took to hack it in the cutthroat world of lullaby writing.
“Hey, those are the breaks. Some people have talent and some don’t. Take it from me, the woman who wrote the frickin’ golden standard when it comes to lullabies. This buffoon couldn’t put a baby to sleep with a piano full of Xanax, and that’s putting it lightly, because, well, we lullaby folks don’t like putting things any other way,” wheezed the 168-year-old Crockett, while spewing a blob of chewing tobacco into a nearby spittoon and motioning for a waiter to bring her a second steak. “He should start taking the old lullaby adage to heart and ‘hush little baby, don’t say a word’ for the foreseeable future! It’s supposed to be bedtime, not amateur hour.”
At press time, Swinkroff attempted to pass out from fear, but his lullabies were so ineffective he couldn’t even do that.