Our young Huey has a great love for music. He researches it, sings it and has been known to play it at house-shaking volume, which has me sounding like my own loving mother: “Turn that dang thing down!”
But Huey has always had what I thought to be good taste in music (which, of course, is classic rock and roll) and, like his mother, wasn’t drawn to the world of country and western music.
I love Billy Joel and so does Huey. I adore REO Speedwagon and so does Huey. I could, if I so chose, sing out “Rocket Man” by Elton John, and I’d doggone betcha that Huey could sing along. And although we’d most likely get our posteriors booted off the stage of “American Idol,” we’d still get a kick out of it.
Recently, however, Huey has been listening to his music with his headphones on, and I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that he’d gone where I’d never dreamt he’d go.
I suppose there were the occasional clues and signs I should have recognized. After all, we’d been through something similar with his older brother. But like any parent in denial, I turned a blind eye. Instead of seeing what was happening and taking the bull by the horns, I let it slide and hoped against all hope that if I ignored the situation, it would go away.
As mothers in denial are prone to do, I tried not to think about it and pretended this little situation didn’t exist. Yet on more than one occasion, I went to the computer only to find that a Web page had been viewed on Chet Atkins. I thought I heard the sound of a steel guitar coming from his headphones. And once, when he thought I wasn’t around, he came up out of his chair and all but screamed out, “Yee-haw!”
Then there was the day he pulled into the garage in his beat-up pickup truck, and I’ll be dogged if the unmistakable sound of twang wasn’t emanating from the speakers. He hopped out, rubbed the dog’s ears and with little or no regard for breaking a mother’s heart, leaned his head back and sang a song out. And although I couldn’t swear to it in a court of law, I think the words were something along the lines of “Her Teeth Was Stained, But Her Heart Was Pure.”
The confrontation was imminent. I had refused to believe it until it hog-tied my hide and slapped my grandma.
“What on earth are you listening to?” I asked with great dismay.
“It’s a cool song, Mom. You’ll love it if you just listen to the words.”
“Turn that nonsense off before my friends drive by,” I pleaded. We couldn’t let folks know what was going on.
He respected my wishes for a while, and then he began to throw caution to the wind. Just the other day he sat on the kitchen counter and played out songs on his iHome (today’s answer to the boom box) about cowgirls not crying, dogs in the back of pickup trucks, and some wangy-twangy tune titled “You Done Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat.”
Not only was it reminiscent of a wolf howling in pain, it was more than my achy breaky heart could bear.
There’s no such thing as music around here anymore without an all-out battle. I put on Journey, and he switches it to Brooks and Dunn. Right when I’m in the middle of “Proud Mary,” that kid comes around the corner with “How Can I Miss You if You Won’t Go Away?” Instead of joining me a cappella in my rendition of “Respect,” he listens to me for a minute and then overpowers me vocally with “If the Phone Don’t Ring, It’s Me.”
Worse yet, just yesterday Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman” got stuck in my head, and I can’t get it out.
I know that folks are dealing with so much more than a child insisting that you listen to “You’re The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly” or knee slapping a tune titled “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd.” But I’ll tell you this — it’s enough to make a rock fan such as me want to roll on out of here.
Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book “Are We There Yet?” You can reach her at www.loriclinch. com.