Light My Bluegrass Fire
Well, it looks like I’m not going to get the Mother of the Year award, but I did have a fun week, and am crazy happy about all kinds of things like the fact that it’s Friday, I’m getting a haircut tomorrow, I don’t owe the Feds OR the State anything this year, and the high school band is doing a Doors medley.
Yes, a Doors medley. Never mind that there are probably PARENTS who don’t get the Doors.
I spent a lot of time talking on the last post about my younger kid, but my older kid is pretty awesome himself. He’s always got the keenest observations, the most thought provoking questions, and the smart-assest comebacks. He’s not afraid to talk about anything. This makes hanging out with him a pretty interesting activity. Our main event of the week was watching “Hotel Rwanda” – he had seen it at school and really wanted us to watch it so we rented it from the library. His observations were quite astute for his age. He’s a lot of fun but he’s a deep cat, too.
He also loves to play the sax. He’s in the concert band at the high school. In the somewhat typical random fashion our conversations follow, as we were throwing dinner together Thursday night he posed the question: “Do you know the song, ‘Touch Me’?”
My eyes lit up, and my head spun around. I suddenly found that I had in fact turned into Tina Fey right there in my kitchen as I rendered each of the songs in the Doors medley being tackled by the high school band. My son appeared both mortified, and relieved that this music might actually be pretty cool.
The band director had asked the kids to listen to the songs. So, in keeping with my poor parenting choices, we pulled down YouTube videos of Jim Morrison and his crew doing several of the numbers. (One of them was a Smothers Brothers show—those guys were so ahead of their time and SO COOL!) What better way to expand your child’s musical horizons? Sure, Jim Morrison died of a heroin overdose, but what the heck, he was a great poet. And kids like that he’s buried in Paris. Buried in Paris is kind of cool.
In honor of the Twinsburg High School band’s brave Doors endeavor, I share this magical bluegrass version of “Light My Fire.” If this doesn’t get my kids taken away from me, I guess we’ll be good for a while!
posted by Mando Mama @ 9:32 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Son and Daughter of Mando are very cool kids. I feel priviledged to watch them grow up. They are, indeed, lucky to have you as their mother. Indeed.
We taught the Shameless girls how to play euchre. Mr. Shameless taught them everything, including how to steal the deal, sniffing out a euchre, and saying moo. We'll have to play some at homecoming!
I never, ever imagined, twenty some odd years ago, that we'd be playing euchre with our kids and having them quote lines from The Holy Grail to us. Bring me a shrubbery! Younger Shameless likes to yell "I fart in your general direction!"
Oh, and when they teamed up in our last euchre game, they beat me and Mr. Shameless. Sigh.
Well Shameless, I think the whole point of parenting is to raise kids who will move on to be successful and confident and happy. I'd say beating you and Mr. Shameless at Euchre is a good start! I think we started to teach Son of Mando a while back but it is probably time to re-engage! "Euchre: The Next Generation."
Thanks for your kind words. You've been there for me from the day Son of Mando popped out, and I feel fortunate that our kids have always this amazing constellation of grownups willing to help grow them up. I think we're all pretty lucky in that regard. To paraphrase another much-loved group that I doubt will be featured in a high-school battle of the bands: what a long, strange but wonderful trip it's been-- and it's far from over!
Post a Comment
<< Home