Battle of the Sexes

Music.  My wife and I have very different tastes in music.  She calls me a hard rocker and I call her a WUSS.  I like my music to have, at the very least, a guitar, a set of drums and a nice bass. She likes her music developed on a keyboard and performed by gang-criminals with a Dr. Seussian vocabulary.  In all the years that we were together it never really bothered us all that much.  She listened to her stuff; I listened to my stuff and the only cross-over came when some scantily clad female wiggled some skin on MTV.

That was until we had children.

Then a very quiet, very silent began.  I was determined that my big strong strapping boys would not grow up to the sounds of generic boy band x. Blessed with my sense of rhythm I figured there was no future in them listening to dance music.  While my wife was a stay at home mom, she plied them with 80‘s dance music, daily disco parties in the living room.  I tried to balance that was some solid rock.

Early on I lost quite a few battles, the war looked to be a lost cause…  and then some-where along the line St Jimmy stepped in.  I am not sure what prompted it, but I have a vague recollection of Liam having a discussion at school about who was the best guitarist.  Later that day he asked me and I rhymed off a few.  Peter Frampton I told him can make his guitar talk, Eric Clapton can make his cry, but perhaps the best might be Jimmy Hendrix.  And thus the war turned.  A small victory came when a “Best of Jimmy Hendrix” cd was found in the bargain bin and made it’s way into the house, before long Purple Haze was a daily requirement. It moved from there to Nickleback, some Greenday.

While I had some victories, the war was not complete as the Rick Astley still garnered some playtime for dancing.  It was not until the earlier morning of a hockey tournament that my victory was assured.  The boys, who were still trying to sleep in the dressing room as parents struggled to get them dressed, were blasted into wide eyed wonder when a father walked into the room, ghetto blaster on shoulder, Quiet Riot blasting a full volume.

“We’re not going to take it, no we ain’t going to take it”

Soon it moved to Thunfderstruck by AC/DC.  I wept in joy as Liam’s head started to rock back and forth.

Yesterday we went out on a family outing. After loading all the boys into the van, I handed Liam the MP3 fm broadcaster and showed him how to plug it in.  He set it all up, we tuned into the station and he selected a song on his MP3 player.  

And the guitar started, Angus Young of AC/DC started his vocals and “Back in Black” started blaring from my suburban mini-van.

I glanced in the rear view window to see the eyes of my 2-year-old glaze up as he started to rock his head back and forth.  The 2 big boys in the rear seats started wail on air guitars, and my wife. Well he just rolled her eyes and started to whimper.

I have won mwaaa haaaa haaaa.

(not that our parenting is a competition or anything… really  it’s not )