Mother Knows Best?

One of the nice things I've found about living in the Seattle area is that three of my children have professional reasons for coming to visit! Meg came for a visit in March because she works for Amazon, which is headquartered in Seattle, and had to come for some training at the home office.  Brandon will be here in less than two weeks for an optometry conference and Barton was here last week for a "sedation" conference required by his pediatric dentistry residency. (I don't know about you, but a "sedation" conference does NOT sound very stimulating to me and I wouldn't want to be the facilitator at such a conference, talking about putting people to sleep... just sayin'....)

Anyway, Bart was here and his visit was short (Thursday night to Sunday morning with classes all day Friday, all day Saturday and Sunday morning). Consequently our visit consisted of dinners together, a visit to my friend Nancy and a quick trip at sundown to the Lighthouse Beach in Mukilteo, Washington.

Bart at the beach at sundown

Nevertheless, even though it was short, we had a great visit and I was glad he'd finally made it here since he was the only one of my kids who had never been to see me in Seattle yet.

Now, for the purpose of this blog... For those of you who are mothers, I don't know what kind of relationship you have with your children, but mine love to be able to make fun of me or prove me wrong. I don't mean they're disrespectful or rude, but the fact that I've nearly ALWAYS been right, their entire lives (cough, cough...) they get a perverse enjoyment out of being able to prove me wrong from time to time.  Bart had one of those moments last week.

My kids grew up on "the oldies." They're familiar with the Monkees, the Beatles, Herman's Hermits, the Turtles and, apparently, the Four Seasons, to name a few of the groups. Bart drove my car to Seattle each day and each evening I would get into my car and be blasted out by the stereo on full blast, playing the Jersey Boys soundtrack. Bart defended himself by saying the vocal is so high, you have to play it loud to sing loud to be able to hit the notes. I had to agree. I usually play it full blast as well... But I commented that I was surprised he knew the songs well enough to sing them. (Apparently I played my one Four Seasons album more often than I remember.)

Anyway, it led to a discussion in which he told me that he was singing an oldie at work one day and someone asked him how he knew that song. His response was "My mom. Oldies were all we listened to when I was a kid and I thought it was all new music until I was thirteen." 

Actually, I think that's a lie... maybe until MEGAN was thirteen, although I think she was younger than that when she discovered popular music, so he had to have heard it when she played it on her stereo or when I let her pick the radio station in the car. The funny thing was, frequently when we played the popular music radio stations, the kids would end up fighting in the car. Not to say that they didn't fight otherwise (I always kept a paint stick in the car to threaten them with...), but it seemed to happen more frequently when the bubble gum music of the 50s, the beach music of the 60s or the hippie music of the 70s wasn't playing. So, to help keep the peace, when a quarrel would erupt, all I had to do was switch to MY radio station and before long, the whole family would be singing along, Happy Together....

So, what does all this have to do with the title of this blog or the fact that I mentioned that my kids love to prove me wrong? Well, on the Jersey Boys soundtrack it talks about how, like so many other young vocal groups, the Four Seasons began by singing other people's hits in out of the way clubs, etc. and they were no different. The song "Silhouettes" was one of the songs they sang and it's included on the soundtrack.

So Bart was walking around the house one morning singing "Silhouettes" and I heard him sing "...I said to my shock, you're on the wrong blo-ock..."

"Myself," I said.

"What?"

"I said to myself, you're on the wrong block."

"Mom, that doesn't rhyme."

"Well, 'I said to my SHOCK' doesn't make any sense."

"No. But it rhymes."

So, we're in the car driving. The soundtrack is on and "Silhouettes" begins to play. The volume goes up. The volume goes up a little higher as the line approaches. And they sing "I said to my shock..."

And Bart goes ballistic! "My SHOCK!!! They definitely said 'My SHOCK!'"

He's laughing and yelling...

"It still doesn't make sense..."

Not quite willing to give in yet, I reach for my Herman's Hermits CD, which also has their version of "Silhouettes." I find the song on the CD. Once again, the volume goes up, we stop singing in anticipation of the dreaded lyrics...

And Peter Noone disappoints me as he too sings "I said to my shock..."

Again Bart goes ballistic. I concede the win to him, but it still makes no sense....

And Bart has earned the right to gloat...