Be Your Own Broom

Be your own broom. Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash

Some of the best parenting advice, heck, life advice, we ever received was from the They Might Be Giants’ song, “I am not your broom.”

The song was on the TMBG CD “No!,” released in 1997 when our son Jonathan was about two years old. The CD included short animations to accompany each song if you played it on your computer. I’d sit for hours with Jonathan on my lap listening to and watching the songs on our aqua-marine iMac.

“I am not your broom” resonated with me for its message which was simply don’t let anyone push you around and be your own person. The advice to “be your own broom” is not in the song’s lyrics. Instead, it’s included on screen in the short animation, repeating with “be your own broom,” “broom is his own broom,” “be your own broom,” and so on.

As our son grew up, even into high school and beyond, the reminder to “be your own broom” was a remedy against peer pressure and a reminder for him to follow his own path. Even today, as he’s become a young, successful entrepreneur, Susan and I will remark, “that’s Jonathan, being his own broom.”

And I can honestly say that I’ve taken the “be your own broom” advice to heart in my own life more than once. To me, it’s a statement that affirms the value of critical thinking and self-reliance.

Yes, TMBG packed a lot into that one-minute and four-second song. You might say, it’s a song that’s resonated for a lifetime.