It's music to my ears

I'm turning into my mother.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it's something every girl swears will never happen when they grow up. Interesting, since as a Gen X-er, I am supposed to be breaking free of whatever came before and forging ahead into uncharted territory.

Maybe it's that the terrain is new to me, and these are my kids we're talking about here. In other words: bring on the long johns, healthy snacks, G-rated movies, and Sunday School CDs.

Growing up, we weren't allowed to listen to Michael Jackson or Madonna and I didn't even know about Guns 'n Roses or AC/DC. Our friends' parents were less worried about such things, and after we got over our initial shock at hearing such music for the first time, we quickly invented new lyrics to sing over the original ones. We figured we'd get in less trouble if we ever got busted.

One year after a particularly successful chocolate bar fundraising drive at school, I was awarded a Top Gun soundtrack cassette. I was so excited (even though I had certainly never seen the movie and had no idea what to expect), so you can imagine my consternation when mom confiscated it and blanked the tape out. She tried to make a big deal about how I could now dub my Rapunzel LP so I could listen to it on my Walkman.

I stared at her, not amused. In those days, I had to whip that one out quite a bit.

Soon after that everyone was listening to Nirvana. Looking back, I'm sure she was nostalgic for a little MC Hammer.

As a mom now, I didn't deliberately keep my kids from popular music. We just wouldn't show them our collection, other than a brief stint with some classical and opera while they were still in utero. Lately this is changing.

It is probably totally unrelated to my recent clamping down on TV time and banning anything rated higher than PG for movies. We've started listening to more music, and as long as that included a lot of Josh Groban and Michael Bublé, I was happy. Husband-- not so much. I have banned Def Leppard to his car stereo.

One day, Tweenie was sifting through our collection and happened upon an Aqua album. "Barbie Girl?" 'Nuff said. Anyone who's familiar with the song knows it starts with Ken and Barbie going for a ride, engine revving. Parlez-vous vroom-vroom, Rascal?

So now I spend my time inventing harmless lyrics again, except this time it's to protect them (not me!). Looks like some things never change...