Crank it up

I loaned my friend Mary my favorite new CD. She liked some of the songs, but the rest were, “Too loud.”

“Oh,” I said, puzzled. “I would have said some of the songs were ‘Too quiet.’”

“And when do you turn forty?” she said.

“Last week. I know it’s wrong, stealing the younger generation’s music that way, but face it. Nothing helps your brain tune out the nagging of the ‘other generation’ like loud music.”

She said, “You mean the children, don’t you? The darlings of your delight? The light of your life? The adored offspring of your laborious labor?”

“Let’s just say I found new meaning in the Guns&Roses song that goes, ‘I used to love her. But I had to kill her.’ Right after she tossed a bowl of Spaghetti-Os on my dining room carpet.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “It’s still wrong. How would you have felt, as a teenager, if your parents had been sneaking your music tapes and slipping them into the car stereo on the sly?”

“Humiliated, I know. But I can’t resist! When you turn it up really loud, the residual deafness lasts a good two hours. I can get home from work, have supper on the table and be halfway through eating before I clearly understand a single word they say.”

“That’s because your children can’t speak clearly. You’re raising children who learned to sing ‘Burning Down the House,” before they learned to sing, ‘Jingle Bells.’”

“What’s wrong with that? I’m hoping to influence their career ambitions. I want them to grow up to be rock musicians so I can retire in Hollywood.”

She conceded. “You might have a point. But still, that music is obnoxious. It’s obsessed with sex, drugs, and illegally-driven automobiles.”

“So? I’m a married woman with two small children. Why shouldn’t I obsess on sex, drugs, and illegally-driven automobiles? It’s hard not to obsess when you can’t have any.”

“For shame!”

“And what was that video tape I saw you hide under your newspaper, when I came in a little while ago?”

“Just something I was screening for the children,” she said.

“Oh? You were expecting your four-year-old to ask to see Lethal Weapon Three anytime soon?”

“I have to be prepared,” she mumbled.

“Oh. You have a point. Pop it in, will you? Before the kids get back.”