Digital Father Podcast

Fun with Daughter

Daughter loves to sing. Loves. It.

Last night, I picked her up from French Class (she takes an evening class at the local rec center) and we headed off to the mall to get birthday gifts. She has two birthday parties coming up. One friend is a Beatles fan, the other an aspiring Broadway diva.

So we headed off to the record store to see what they had. We found Beatles 1, which is a great bang for the buck. 27 hit songs, 1 CD. We also found a compilation in the Show Tunes section of hits from original productions. Mary Martin’s “Sound of Music”, Betty Buckley’s “Memory”, that kind of thing. The best part of the entire trip- both CD’s under $10. That is apparently the threshold for classmate birthday gifts. Another unwritten rule in the the “Fathers Guide to not looking Stupid.”

Anywho, we headed down to Staples to pick up a printer for Son, who has been:

• writing work on his own computer
• changing the text to red to print it out on his broken printer
• proofing and editing
• printing it out on his broken printer
• proofing and editing again
• changing the text to black
• putting it on a flash drive and printing it out on my printer.

Homework should not be that hard. We found a Lexmark for $40, so I snagged it.

Back home, after being chastised because “I can’t send you to the store without buying something extra!” I started goofing with Son, who mentioned “Man of La Mancha”, one of the shows on the CD. As I ran about the house, tilting at windmills and singing of ‘my quest to follow that star’, Daughter began naming songs off the CD. I sang each one for her (except “Mame”, which I don’t know) while she sat in the kitchen at the counter. Then she ran and got the Beatles CD, and began naming the 27 songs on that CD. I knew most of those as well, and with help from Wife, we got through.

Then out came the music books. Now Daughter wanted to sing all the music from “The Sound of Music.” Off we went to the Music Room (yes, we have a Music Room) so I could sit at the piano, and we could all sing “Edelweiss”, “The Lonely Goatherd” and “Sound of Music.” Son kept himself upstairs blowing up something on the computer, so it was just a night with the girls. What was unusual was the idea of me making music in the house. I do it professionally on the outside, but not as much as I did 4 years ago. I suppose I kind of miss it a bit, but I love even more seeing the children do it.

I guess it will be my legacy, to see my children pick up where I left off. I don’t wish it on them, but it is certainly likely that they will, in some way, be just like me.