They Grow Up So Loud
You know how it is when you’re going about your day, and you find yourself humming or whistling a tune which you suddenly realized came from something else? I mean, as in you didn’t consciously decide to hum or whistle it? More like it sort of burrowed its way into your construct all stealth-like and under the radar while you were making lunches, or making phone calls, or making plans to cash in the college savings and make your way to Fiji? Like that.
That’s how this started. Except that it started about eleven years ago:
One day I was working in my office and realized I’d been humming Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. For about half an hour. Then I realized that my brain had been hijacked by the melody because it was being played very lightly…very haltingly…but very distinctly, on a little toy piano. By Alpha Male, then two years old.
I turned around in my chair and saw him sitting there in the hallway, dressed like a little two-year old right down to those terrific little tennis shoes that look like dinner rolls, figuring out the melody all by himself on this little Fisher-Price-type precious, sweet, childlike, little, cute, tiny piano. Musically gifted. Sorta runs in a smaller stream in our family, right along the bigger illustrating and painting river. Very big moment. Saying creativity sorta runs in my family is like saying the Pope is sorta Catholic. I’d been waiting and wondering how it would present itself in him. And there it was: music.
Doesn’t that sound nice?
Good. Because that darling toddler has mutated into Led Zeppelin and turned my garage into something out of Spinal Tap. It’s packed out with a drum set (neighborhood kid’s), an electric guitar (Alpha Male), another electric guitar (some other neighborhood kid’s, I can’t keep track), a keyboard, wires, all over the floor covered in duct tape and criss-crossing each other (oh, I finally found my duct tape, thanks for asking), and several large electronic…boxy things. I’ve hearing loss in both ears, but, sadly, not enough to mistake what those large boxy things are. They’re amplifiers.
And I hate them.
This whole arrangement was a court-ordered Objection Overruled handed down by Cute Redhead. The worst of it was not that she and Alpha Male got their way. It was the way she smiled at me while I LOST. MY. MIND over the fact that I will never get to park my car in it again, and if I should like to try and get to my tool bench, a backstage pass wouldn’t be a bad idea.
I got all big and animated and Over My Dead Body and Oh You Think You’re Letting Them Blast My Ear Drums To Kingdom Come, huh?? Oh, THAT’S rich! Ha! I’d like to see you try! And another thi—
—and then she says to the other mom on the phone she has set against her ear and says—actually, wait. I should paint this picture a little more so you can appreciate how definitively I lost this one.
She’s sitting there on the couch, on the phone with Other Mom (who’d probably let a witch doctor draw blood out her knee caps if it promised getting the band out of her basement). Her legs are up on the couch tucked up under her, and one arm rests languidly on the back of the couch. She’s flipping her hair. I know that’s not important information, but along with the kind and endearing smile she was wearing, it sort of tells you how she was interpreting The Tirade I was whipping up. And if you couldn’t hear the actual dialogue, I promise you would have assumed it was something along the lines of this:
“Oh, Isn’t marriage the best? Yeah. Oh that’s sweet. *giggle* Yeah. What’s that? Oh no, I love your new outfit. I think it’s cute. Not as cute as I think my husband is. Mm hm. Oh I’d love to accept your dinner invitation…but, to do that without first discussing it with my beloved? Perish the thought. Call you soon! Bye!” *click*
But this is what she said to Other Mom, “…*giggle* yeah. Uh uh. Ha ha. Yeah. Hold on, let me call you back. *smile* Yeah. He’s saying ‘no.’ It’s cute. Ha ha. I know. They always think ‘I do’ meant both of us. So cute. Bye!” *click*
I counted off Everything That Could Go wrong. On one finger after another. I counted off Everything That Would Go wrong. On one finger after another. After I ran out of fingers, I brought out the graphs. I lectured. I showed videos. I was Simon Cowell summarily dressing down the wannabe idol. I was lethal, articulate, mad as hell and not budging on this one. Not even a little bit. I spun into a dimension of Oh Hell No I had never been in before in my life.
The whole time—THE. WHOLE. TIME—Cute Redhead is standing right in front of me. Completely nonplussed. She smiled gently. She might have even yawned. I was wielding the full power of the Dark Side and it landed like I was reading off a list of things to pick up at the grocery store.
And before I was even done, before I wound up for Round Three, she puts one hand on my chest and says, “—yeah, they’re teenage boys. Do you want them here where we can keep an eye on them or where we have no idea what’s happened to them? Okay, don’t answer that.”
She had me.
Fifteen minutes later the roadies showed up and that was the end of that.
She’s way smart than you’re. For sure.