Featured Post

WELCOME TO RUSSELL ARBEN FOX'S HOME PAGE

If you're a student looking for syllabi, click the "Academic Home Page" link on your right, and start there.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

I'm Raising a Daughter from the 80s

I'm helping the other girls--ages 8 and almost-5; the 2-year-old is already asleep--pick-up the downstairs playroom before bed. In the background, our oldest--Megan, 12 years old--is doing some math homework.

At about 7:40pm, I realize Megan is playing some music in her room. The song? Van Halen's "So This is Love."

A few minutes later, I pick up on another song coming from her room: Tone-Loc's "Wild Thing."

"Megan," I ask her, poking my head through her open door into her bedroom, "why are you listening to this station?"

"I like it," she says. "It helps me concentrate."

She has an MP3 player, which she often downloads music for, whenever she can afford it. "Is there anything you'd rather be listening to?"

"No; I like what this station plays a lot." She looks at me curiously. "Is there a problem?"

"Not really," I say, hoping she doesn't listen to lyrics any more than I did at her age. "It's just, well, the songs this station is playing are pretty old. I can remember listening to them while doing my homework in high school."

"Oh." She shrugs, and looks back down at her math homework. "I hadn't noticed."

As of this point, the music from her room has continued: Prince's "Little Red Corvette," Steve Miller Band's "The Joker," Eurythmics's "Sweet Dreams," Bee Gees's "Night Fever," Huey Lewis and the News's "I Want a New Drug."

Apparently we are not only managing to raise an FM-station listening daughter from the 1980s, but one that is every bit as MOR as I was at that age. Thank goodness things never change.

4 comments:

Michigan Madsens said...

What is the saying about the apple not falling far from the tree?

M.

Rob Perkins said...

Well let's not forget that Winter '88 was the First Year of Rick Astley.

And that in my exuberance I punched Dan in the face while cheering, that morning Aric won $100 off those stations.

How is it that I can remember that semester so fondly and simultaneously never, ever want to relive it?

Mena said...

ummm.... well I may have a bad memory...but I had NO idea I was listening to 80's music.

Anonymous said...

I'm raising a daughter from the 70's. Not that I want to one-up-you, but mine (about to turn 12) listens to stuff I never listened to (I listened to folk and punk, she listens to Thin Lizzy, The Sweet, Tull, Led Zeppelin, Supertramp, etc. I'm trying to impose Lindisfarne on her, and you, too, Russell, should try Lindisfarne (and so should you, megan!)