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Parental DJs
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___Our third-grade boys have discovered the world of pop music, and my ears will never be the same.
___ It's not that they like to pump up the volume too loud. It's having to endure listening to these songs over and over and over.
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MARK WINGFIELD
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___ Once Luke learned how to operate the CD player, we were all in trouble. He now puts on the Backstreet Boys, plays his favorite song or two, then pushes the buttons to replay those same songs until I'm ready to scream.
___ In the car, he expects me to be his personal juke box operator. From the back seat, he calls out song numbers he wants me to punch in, skipping half the album and repeating his chosen few in what appears to me to be random order.
___ This is where I finally put on the brakes. "I am not your own personal DJ in the car," I declared one day while trying to navigate traffic and listen to his musical commands. "You will listen to all the songs in order or you will not listen to any of them."
___ At least with the CD player you have some control. The boys' other favorite musical pastime in the car is listening to Radio Disney, an all-kids-all-the-time station designed to make parents wreck the family car. If you expected a Mickey Mouse station like this to have a small output on the AM band, you'd be correct. One pass through a low spot on the city streets and the signal goes fuzzy. That part sort of reminds me of the old days.
___ But the songs. Oh, the songs. I never knew such inane stuff got recorded anywhere. And you know the more inane a song is, the more likely you are to get it stuck in your brain on constant replay.
___ All this overexposure makes me long for the respite of piano lessons. Bach never sounded so sweet before.
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___I guess it could be worse. Our friends who have all girls are getting large doses of Brittney Spears. The only time the boys voluntarily turn off Radio Disney is when she is on (which, fortunately, is quite often). They’re still in that "all girls are yucky" stage. W
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ALISON WINGFIELD
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e’ll take it while it lasts.
___ Radio Disney is a fun station for kids, but the static drives me batty. The boys know that in messy traffic, the radio either gets switched to classical music or is turned off. Quiet can be bliss.
___ Since when did 8-year-olds start getting into the popular music scene? I don’t remember being up-to-date on new groups and songs until I was a teenager, or at least a preteen.
___ What cracks me up--and sometimes disturbs me--is that most of the lyrics are about teenage love in some form or another. And our kids--who still close their eyes to avoid seeing anyone kiss, even when Mom and Dad--don’t realize these songs are about girls.
___ My biggest problem is telling the groups apart. N'SYNC and the Backstreet Boys sound quite similar to this out-of-touch mom. Thanks to the boys, I know some of their songs quite well, but don’t ask me which group sings which song.
___ The boys also have a way of making up new words to their favorite songs. And being third graders, the words they make up usually come from bathroom humor.
___ Garrett has started prancing around his bedroom with his behind stuck way up in the air as he sings his new version of the Baja Men song "Who Let the Dogs Out?" His version, as you might imagine, involves flatulence, not dogs.
___ Surviving is the name of the game for this new musical world in which we find ourselves. Instituting an official time of quiet in our house is the next step.
___ Perhaps then we can remember to listen for the still, small voice of God.
Mark Wingfield is managing editor of the Standard. Alison Wingfield is a freelance writer. The Wingfields moved to Texas from Louisville, Ky., where Mark had been editor of the Western Recorder, in which this column appeared weekly. |
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