At the dinner table the other night we got into a discussion about music. Somehow the fact that my In-laws have been listening to a radio station that plays "light" rock from the 70's and 80's came up in our conversation. What's funny is that on our last trip Melissa told her mom "these are the same songs you wouldn't let me listen to when I was a teen! Why are you listening to them now?"

There wasn't a good answer, of course, other than that the songs were no longer "popular" and therefore OK. That's a really weak argument, but it gave us the opportunity to talk to our kids about music.

Tangent: Have you noticed that a lot of music sounds like there's something wrong with the singer? Nirvana was, and is, the best example of what I mean. Listen to All Apologies and add these lines:

Never should have ate it.
Now I'm constipated.

It fits perfectly!

Anyway, the kids started asking about music that we used to listen to. Rather than just tell them about the evils of Rock and Roll, we started singing.

We started with ABBA's Dancing Queen, moved on to songs from Saturday Night Fever (You should hear my falsetto!), and thoroughly enjoyed making our kids squirm in their seats. It was dreadful - pure torture for them! But it is a moral imperative for the father, at least, to embarrass his children by acting in ways they think is foolish. Dancing to the music that comes out of various shops while walking through the mall is an excellent way of accomplishing this task. Mom's tend to do these things in privacy.

It's great being a dad.

We may be required to turn in our Fundamentalist Club member cards for admitting to knowing (at least in part, which made our singing even worse!) some of these songs, but I'm sure we can redeem ourselves. We'll just sing the "I hate mistletoe" song from Patch the Pirate this Christmas.

Next time we talk about "old" songs, I'll start singing Duran Duran tunes!