Chapter 3. Soundtrack for the Middle of Nowhere

After a flurry of college, I embarked on a life of farm chores. In the meantime, having limited myself to one boyfriend, I also limited myself to one record collection. This mostly worked out okay. Once, I admit, I did run over his new REM album, but that's only because he left it on the roof of my car. We made mix tapes together and lay in bed listening to Yo La Tengo and Big Star while hoping the cat wouldn't claw up our heads. When my boyfriend ran out of hardcore options and moved on to Thelonious Monk, it was like pretending to be grownups. We even got married. After listening to the Billie Holiday selections on our hospital compilation, the obstetrical nurses remarked that our parents must be very proud.

Nonetheless, as an infant, said jazz-welcomed son refused to sleep to anything except Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, played loud and at midnight. As he grew older, his tastes shifted exuberantly to the Ramones, the world's best play-group band. All his friends liked to drive Tonkas around the living room and dance to "Beat Up the Brat." Things got stickier a few years later, when Son Number 2 arrived and fell in love with a song titled "Who's Got the Crack?" This was a good chance to explain what can and cannot be brought to school for show-and-tell.

I will quickly gloss over the Harmony Music Teacher years. Suffice it to say we performed a K-8 rendition of the Village People's "In the Navy" to great acclaim. And now here we are in teen land, which naturally requires angst and sarcasm. This can be accomplished by cranking up the radio every time the Eagles come on, just because you know your mother despises them. Let us hope the angsty one continues to remember that this very same mother is also the only person he knows who is willing both to drive him to band practice and to belt out the vocals that the band boys are too shy to sing. After all, it was his idea to cover "Smells Like Teen Spirit."