Chewin' On Aluminum Foil

I love music.

No, make that: I LOVE music. With a big heart. A red heart. A big gushy-gushy red heart. Printed on a t-shirt for the whole world to see.

Growing up, my dad always quizzed me and taught me the importance of music. I can remember being five years old and driving into the city, and naming off every band/singer he asked for... Fleetwood Mac, Kansas, Shooting Star, George Thorogood. My dad taught be about rock, blues and the importance of live music.

Flash forward twenty-some-odd years later, and I still love music. In fact, probably more than my dad (or, at least, ranging a larger scale than my dad). I still love rock and the blues, but I also love alternative, rap, bluegrass, big band, classical, oldies, and - yes, Goddess help us - some country (which Aaron totally give me shit about; but on a side note, he does agree than its the only music genre right now discussing true American life and putting all aspects of life into the music. Unless your agnostic or atheist, then you're screwed).

Like every other Saturday for the past few months, I took my cousin Sarah (see? I remembered the damn "H") out to run some errands and have some fun. The previous week I had discovered that her parents and two older brothers had been neglecting her and NOT TEACHING THE POOR CHILD ABOUT MUSIC.

How does this happen?!

She doesn't know who sings what, what year it was released or what the title of the album was called. And I told her, "And that's why you're not making straight A's you slacker. You need to be studying your music."

Griffin - not even four yet - knows the different genres of music; he loves Fall Out Boy, Weezer, "Micky Donna," White Strips and Beck. He doesn't like Nine Inch Nails, because (in his words) "They're too techno." Darwin loves dancing to the music and rushes into the room when he realizes I have MTV Hits on tv. Death Cab for Cutie calls him down. And they both like relaxing to Jack Johnson.

Music just isn't the soundtrack to movies; its the soundtrack to our lives. I don't understand how some people do not realize its importance, do you?