Monday, February 7, 2011

One Way or Another

Millie writes:

Another thing every mom needs in her arsenal is something that gets her high.

I was raised in Humboldt County (aka The Stoner Capital of the World) so I know from high. There were more drugs available in my junior high cafeteria than there are in our local Walgreens. It was still legal for kids to buy cigarettes in California and it was easy to find someone to buy you liquor if you wanted it. The net result was a squeaky-clean Millie – not because I was a particularly upstanding example of American teenagerhood, but because in Humboldt County getting blasted was no big deal – I knew what it looked like. It didn't look like fun.

My secret vice was music.

Not the music they played on Lawrence Welk or Hee-Haw, either. My parents were Kingston Trio Fundamentalists, so I was in high school before I got my first taste of an unsyncopated back-beat and found out what rock can do to a girl.

Good rock music bypasses my ears and goes straight to my psyche, and I need to have a careful mix on hand ready to fire up at any moment. Rock gets me up when I can't, makes me forget my troubles for a while, lets me laugh and act crazy without rendering me unfit to drive. There is no Valium that can make me feel the way I felt when I first heard AC/DC's “The Jack.

There are more of us out here than you think, us Moms Who Rock. Other babies listen to lullabies, ours are rocked to sleep with “Welcome to the Jungle.” After we drop the kids off at school, the windows in the minivan are reverberating to Def Leppard. Other mothers teared up at “Toy Story 3” - we cried at the end of “School of Rock.”

I'd share my current playlist, but it's beside the point – you need to find the music that works for YOU. You'll know it when you find your head, shoulders and hips moving without your volition; you'll know it when you don't care how loud your teenagers turn it up; you'll know it when it makes you smile and feel like dancing even though nothing else is going right.

Rock 'n' roll may be bad for the hearing . . .

but it's great for the soul.

5 comments:

  1. Music is what gets me through the day more often than not, and more often than anything else.

    As far as kids and rock... Bon Jovi's You Give Love A Bad Name is the favorite song of all three of my kids, not one over the age of 10. Me, I'm rocking out to Breaking Benjamin frequently as of late. It's not something I dance to per se, but I move to it, and that is what counts, yes?

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  2. Eminem Lose Yourself...just wish the lyrics were a bit more kid friendly, although that one is tame compared to some of his other stuff (which I like too). Eminem is definately my secret upper. Which is why I was stoked the backbeat was in the Chrysler commercial :)

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  3. k.d. lang singing Cohen's "Hallelujah" - Ok, anything by k.d. Lang, Sarah McLoughlin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Gladys Knight and the Pips (in my next life, I'M A PIP!) Dixie Chicks.

    Me likes girl singers!

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  4. PS I'm working on something about gun control, but I just got back from the ophthalmologist and my eyes are DILATED. I'm getting a stiff neck just reading your posts!

    The good news - no sign of macular edema, so the gilenya (the new MS drug) is showing no negative side effects! And I got my dermatology f/up yesterday, and no suspicious lesions, sooooooooooo

    Sometimes taking drugs is an exercise in health maintenance! Anyone who 'experiments' with drugs is a real goner!

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