Musicology

In the car earlier today, Owen let me know with a screech or two that NPR was not doing it for him, entertainment-wise. I switched over to XM Kids. After a few songs, Hannah Montana came on and, along with her synth robot band, reminded us that “nobody’s perfect”. My finger hovered above the tuner knob. I looked back and realized that Owen was just as relaxed and happy with this song as he had been with Three Little Birds and Stray Cat Strut. I sighed. At these moments, we parents realize that we can play Pixies and Bob Marley and Beatles and Peter Gabriel and Sam Cooke for our kids all we like, but at some point it’s out of our hands. His journey to good music will be fraught with wrong turns and – if karma has a say in it – he may at some point beg me to buy him the latest album by the 2017 version of New Kids on the Block or Whitesnake. So, I relaxed my expectations for the first of many, many times to come, and let the wise sage, Hannah Montana, continue her life-lesson-in-song.