The Kids are Alright
It’s no secret to anyone that knows me: music has always been a huge part of my life. I’m the only one I know who blushed shamelessly when Rob confessed to Dick in High Fidelity, “They’re arranged in auto-biographical order.” Mike looked at me with this sense of amazement, as if to say, “Holy shit my wife isn’t the only one who does that?”
After saying goodbye to most of my vinyl senior year of college [maybe another story sometime, a sort of traumatic experience that I hate talking about but was absolutely necessary], I neglected music for almost a year. I think I was afraid of it to some extent, and worried that it was insulted by my “Everything Must Go: LPs $2, 7″ $1″ sign. I understood, and I let music have a break from me as I tried to get settled into a new life in Boston the year following graduation.
When I found out I was pregnant, I decided that I could not avoid my first love any longer. I started working on collecting some missing albums on CD (oh my), and when I eventually moved back to Texas, I even found my way to some live shows again. I felt relieved, like I had finally gotten back to who I really was, even though my sister’s friends thought I was some weird aunt who gave her a ride to Ted Leo.
Dash has always listened to my music, too. Ever since the womb, he’s had a wide variety of musical influences, and that makes me proud. I always said that I’d raise my kid on rock and roll, and I’ve stuck to that. Dash listens to The New Pornographers, The Unicorns, Drive Like Jehu and Dirty Three (when it’s bedtime). There is no Raffi or Barney in this house, and he knows which CDs to look for in my big CD book on the coffee table. When he finds the bright and eye-catching artwork on his favorite Pavement CD (Wowee Zowee), he gets excited.
I consider this to be one of my small triumphs in life - raising a kid who not only listens to good music but prefers actual music to stupid kid’s songs. A friend of mine thinks its insane that I deprive him of KidSongs Volume 128, but I think I’m doing him a favor. It’s not like he never gets to sing Old McDonald — he does — he just prefers to dance around and sing “Cut Your Hair”. I don’t see the issue, it’s as much his choice now as it is mine.
One problem is that when we go to a friend’s house for a playdate, he goes directly for the “grown-up” CD player, because he thinks that his music will magically appear in there, or that everyone listens to the same things he does. I’ve never seen a more confused and detached look on my child’s face as I did that day. Welcome to the real world, kiddo, where grown ups listen to crappy music and you’re forced to listen to it almost everywhere you go.
And the dancing! Oh, the dancing! I’m not sure where or how he learned the booty dance, but since about 15 months, he’s been doing this dance where he puts his hands against the wall or table and starts shaking his butt around. When he wants me to join in, he’ll walk up behind me, place his hands on my butt, and jiggle it around, saying, “Dance, dance.” Yeah, that part isn’t so cute, but I forgive him when I see him dancing to Kanye West with Pink Bunny in one hand and sippy cup in the other.
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