Soapbox

A Serpent’s Tooth

When you have children, if you expect them to turn out like little versions of you… you’re doomed to be sorely disappointed, my friend.

You can share with them your love of auto mechanics, but don’t expect them to have any affinity for a wrench. By all means, tell them how scouting enriched your life and gave you self-confidence, but be prepared for their utter indifference to tying knots and lashing together a lean-to. You can hope to pass on your love of books, or the joy of bowling, and even your personal faith… but you can’t expect them to necessarily take up the mantle.

Kids are their own people- sometimes ruthlessly so. Whether it’s from sheer defiance or because, when their own chromosome square-dance took place they didn’t get matched up with the right gene, children often choose to head in a very different direction than their parents. If you try too hard to steer them, they may just end up farther away. If you let them make their own choices and are patient, you may find that, in time, they begin to circle back around towards their roots and find a happy middle ground.

Such is the way, of course, with my children. Oh, I tried my best to raise them right, but it was hit-or-miss. They share most of my basic values, like honesty and giving to others less fortunate, but in one vital way that is dear to my heart, I was wildly unsucessful.

They don’t like my music.

You can’t say I didn’t try. From birth, I surrounded them with the folks songs and old Irish maiming ballads of my own youth. Instead of "The Wheels on the Bus" I taught them "Peace Train". Instead of Sharon, Lois and Bram, I gave them Peter, Paul and Mary. And, of course, the Beatles. Always the Beatles!

Stephen soaked it all up- every kind of music I exposed him to: bluegrass, gospel, motown, folk and swing- he listened to it, and learned it… and now has AC/DC and Led Zepplin on his MP3. The little boy who sat on my knee singing Gordon Lightfoot now prefers Ozzy Osbourne. Still, he sits quietly and listens to whatever I am playing, and occasionally I will see a glimmer. A  few weeks after a trip to Athens when I played for him  Dan Fogleberg’s "The Innocent Age" he was playing the piano and I recognized the tune to "Ghosts".

Katie actually edits what she lets me hear of her musical taste. Some of the pop music she listens to I really like, but I know she is also into hip-hop and even rap. She keeps that on her iPod, and to herself. She is just sure I will hate it. Well, perhaps I might. To each his own, I know. But it’s more what she’s not into that wounds me.

For Christmas, I asked for and received a copy of Dylan’s classic "Blonde on Blonde" on CD. Delighted, I opened it up and put it on while I was in the kitchen preparing Christmas dinner. Katie was at the sink, washing her hands. she cocked her head and listened for a minute, and then raised her eyebrows.

"Man! And you say my music sucks!" she commented, and tossed me the dishtowel.
"Hey!  Some of it does!" I countered, wounded and scandalized.
"Yeah, but I keep it to myself" she said as she went upstairs to put on Freak Boys Down or Arrested Garbage Supply, or whomever she listens to this week.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a smart-alec child!