Sounds Good

Out in the living room, my son is listening to music. He is listening to what he calls his "Saturday Morning Music". He used to watch cartoons. I suspect this is a reaction to the new family edict about screen time (video and computer) for those of us under thirty years old. He is busy creating a birthday card for one of his friends while the stereo pounds out the same four songs over and over. I could complain, but it turns out that I have absolutely no leg to stand on.
I made this CD for him. He is listening to music that I compiled and previewed: songs from the Simpsons movie and Transformers. It is, along with the theme to Harry Potter (which doesn't rock quite as hard) the soundtrack of his summer. Now he's creating art without me having to harass him, and before that, he was playing the piano along with the Linkin Park track. These are tunes I steered him to, and now I get to hear them dozens of times.
As far as the rock thing goes, I can't be surprised by that either. When he was very small, just sitting up on his own, I went for a run with him in our jogging stroller. Returning home hot and sweaty, I decided to take a shower. As was the custom in those days when my wife was out of the house, I tended to turn the volume of the stereo (the same one that is thumping away right now) up to hear it in the shower. When I got out and started toweling myself off, I found my baby boy in the center of our bed where I had left him, bobbing his head mightily to the strains of Bachman Turner Overdrive. Not Fragile, indeed.
Then there is the repetition. I am relieved that he has a four-song suite, since he is capable of fixating on just one for weeks at a time. It could be that all kids are prone to this kind of single-mania, but I know that I wore out my 45 of Elvis doing "In The Ghetto" to the point where I have no recollection of what the flip side was. It never occurred to me to ask my brothers or parents if I was driving them slowly insane.
And now comes that part where I am relived for the invention of the iPod, and headphones. I'm not sure if they're for him or for me just yet.