Kids and Music

The other day I was perusing through my iTunes play list. I got to the newish Finger Eleven song “Paralyzer” (anything less than a decade old is new to me by the way). Anyway it’s a catchy little tune, in a rock-pop "of the now" kind of way, so I crank it up, because I’m not so old that I can’t kick out a jam or even shake what I got now and again... I’m just cool like that. About mid way through the song my eldest (and almost teenage) offspring bebops into the room and stares at me, mouth agape and utterly mortified.

She bemoaned that I’m not supposed to like that song as it is played often on what I’ve dubbed the “ghetto” radio station she listens to and that SHE likes it, which is somehow supposed to magically exclude me from ever even listening to this song, much less liking it. I don’t ever recall hearing “Paralyzer” on said “ghetto” radio station while cruising down Simmonsville in my hip minivan (complete with factory 16’s… alloys dawg), but keeping up with the new music only gets harder with age. Something about mortgage payments and work and laundry etc. pushes the importance of the latest groove hurtling down the priority ladder. Growing up sucks like that. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know a catchy tune when I hear it. The mind might be older and crustier, but the ears still work (mostly).

Anyway the song is about a man in a bar that really wants to be in a “dark lit place or your place or my place” with a woman he sees there (that’s the gist of it anyway). Not exactly what I’d like my young impressionable child to listen to, but I’ve learned long ago to pick my battles, and this one isn’t winnable. She gets to listen but she doesn’t get to participate. Know what I mean?



But I do have more influence over my emerging independent tweenage child than even she would like to admit. I’ve caught her in my ELO stash, and she’ll never admit it, but she even knows all the words too. Here’s hoping she listens to more than just dad’s not so funky-fresh “antique” music collection.