Benign Neglect

I'm making a conscious choice to turn one deaf ear to my daughter's musical choices. Not because I hate them, but rather because I think she needs the freedom to explore boundaries a bit. Yes, I know, it's risky. But it's only one ear and I'm only one parent...even though she does have two. I'm the only parent in this house willing to listen to what she loves to listen to. I listen because it makes her and her friends happy to sing and dance along. I listen because once upon a time, I was 13 and fell in love with music and used it to explain my mercurial emotions.

And so, on a typical school day at around 3:05 pm, here's what you'll hear coming out of my car radio:

What you gon’ do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
I’ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.

I'm certain that I understand it more than she does. To her, it rhymes and has an infectious beat. Where I draw the line, is when this starts to play:

Damn baby all I need is a lil bit
A lil bit of this, a lil bit of that
Get it crackin' in the club when you hear this shit
Drop it like its hot, get to workin' that back
Go shake that thang, yeah work that thang

I do, however, offer an explanation about how degrading this is to women and that sometimes, it's just not cool to talk like that. Then I quickly switch stations to distract her.

She understands and doesn't usually fight too much, probably because I do give her some slack. My theory is that total pop music banishment will only send her off to the store even faster to buy the explicit version so she can listen to it on her iPod. I figure my being reasonable will be rewarded. Perhaps with a calm conversation once a week if I'm lucky.

Another reason for not panicking is because, as I mentioned, I was there once and here's what I was listening to:

Baby, if I think about you
I think about love
Darlin’ if I live without you
I live without love
Feel like makin’
Feel like makin’ love
Feel like makin’ love to you

Or, even better:

'Cause like a princess she was layin' there
Moonlight dancin' off her hair
She woke up and took me by the hand
We made love in my Chevy van
And that's all right with me

I didn't know what that meant when I was 13. It was just a pretty tune and the challenge was to learn the words, not to practice the meaning. I'm pretty sure that the previous generation felt the same way about Elvis. It's just music, not a disease.

To me, music is the olive brance between me and my daughter. She doesn't force her preferences on me and I try not to make fun of them. In fact, some of them are pretty great. And, I think she'd say that she likes a few of my tunes once in a while. Just not when her friends are around.