Tinga Lay Oh

I've been obsessed the last two days with a memory of my and Cory's love affair with Young Guns II.  If you've never seen the flick, I can only suggest that you run, not walk, to your nearest Netflix enabled device.  You will be treated to horses, friends who die for each other, and a charismatic gun-wielding Billy the Kid who surely had a mood disorder.  Naturally, Cory and I were both completely attracted to him.

Although, I really believe Cory's favorite character was Billy the Kid's friend, Chavez Chavez, who was Native American and Hispanic.  He was passionate, spiritual, a story teller, and seemed fairly together (as outlaws go).
A few years later, Cory and I were at one of our weekly Target excursions, when one of us squealed loudly and held up a striped blanket-type sweater.
"Serape!" was cried in triumph, the garment being lifted high in the air, an unbelievably cool find.
"Oh my God, Mom!  We have to get some...you get one color and I'll get the other.  We can be Young Guns twinkies."  she declared, her eyes bright and mischievous.
Right there in the middle of the floor, she dumped her purse and coat, and struggled into the grey sweater with black stripes.  Dramatically, she bowed her head, as if in mourning, pulled one voluminous side of fabric to her, as if closing a cape, and took up a mournful pitch, "Tinga Lay Oh...run little donkey run..."
Helpless with giggles, I plunked it in the cart, along with a cream sweater with taupe stripes for me.  The next time we watched the, movie at home, we put them on, and reenacted the scene in which Chavez Chavez cuts off a lock of his coal black hair in mourning for a lost friend, and then sings a few lines in Navajo.  Not knowing Navajo, Cory substituted the children's song about a donkey.  Somehow, it worked.


We had the best times together, and shared the weird sort of humor no one else did.  There was only her for me and me for her, tingalayo-ing our little hearts out.


It was a feeling that will never be forgotten.  Once and awhile, I wear my "serape" to work on meeting day, and sing a little snatch of the song under my breath, with a dramatic sweep of fabric.  My co-workers are no stranger to my Cory-stories, and for a brief minute in time, she and her shannigans live. 


She lives.