Glory Daze

Lauren has discovered classic rock.

This summer we separated the girls into their own bedrooms again, something that was a long time coming and likely well timed given Tabitha’s move into middle school. At a certain age, privacy just becomes more of an issue than it used to be.

I was a bit worried about how Lauren would take this move. She’s very much a people person, someone who hates to be alone and always wants to know where you are on those rare occasions when that happens. But she took it surprisingly well.

And why not? It’s the funkiest room in the house, long and narrow, with sloping walls and enough storage space in the kneewalls to have a whole other room alongside. It was a walk-in attic when we moved into the house back in the 90s, and in fact we converted it into a bedroom specifically for Lauren shortly after she was born. So it was kind of a homecoming in that sense.

As far as Lauren is concerned, the chief advantages of her new room are two.

First, that she no longer has to put up with Tabitha reading late into the night and leaving the light on that whole time, making it hard for her to get to sleep.

And second, that she can now crank up the tunes.

She chose the station without any input from us. This is probably for the best, as neither of us are particularly hep to the groove of modern youth, or whatever it is the kids say these days. Kim is no doubt better at that than I am, but that is praise of the faintest variety, thinner – as Abraham Lincoln used to say – than a homeopathic soup made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death.

Really, Lincoln actually said that. He wasn’t talking about music, but he actually said that. Can there be any doubt that he was one of our greatest presidents?

Lauren likes to dial up the noise when she is getting ready for bed, so when I come in to read stories with her I usually have to turn it down. Every time I do, though, I end up humming whatever old song from my glory days of the 80s that they’re playing at that moment.

“You know that song, dad?” Lauren will ask in amazement, because it is inconceivable that her father might actually know something that could, by some stretch of verbal gymnastics, be described as cool.

“Yes,” I tell her. “That song’s actually very old. I remember that song from when I was in high school.”

And she agrees that this means that the song is indeed very old.

Whippersnapper.

I am not sure what it means that my youngest child has developed a taste for the J. Geils Band, or Blondie, or the Stray Cats, or Styx, or any number of other such groups. But I’m enjoying it anyway.