That was on our team shirts this summer :)

A year and a half ago, Minifob took a few months of piano lessons. But he got bored with it, and I ain't no stage mom, so I let him stop. (Plus, the teacher sucked anyway.) Recently he's been making noise about wanting to learn another instrument. So we're talking in the car about all the different instruments he could choose--viola, trumpet, saxophone, etc. And he declares to me that he will learn to play all of them, but he'll start with the easiest ones, and move up to the hardest ones as he gets better.

"So first was piano, because that's the easiest. And the second easiest is guitar, so I'll do that next... But drums will have to be last, because they're the very hardest of all."



(However flawed his reasoning may be, I'm happy with drums being dead last.)

Don't tell mini but Lil Griff says drums are easiest!

Don't tell Flint either. ;)

I don't know why, but guitarists and other truly skilled musicians have told me that they 'don't understand how' a drummer can do what they do. Whereas I think the manual dexterity guitarists are using is truly baffling, I believe the part of drumming perceived as 'hard' is the coordination of all four limbs.

But they are using ten fingers--more than twice as much coordination!

to me drums seem hardest because it's so hard to imagine the song you're drumming without the rest of the music. Also hard to keep in time for extended periods. As a guitarist, I rely on the drummer.

i can beat the tar out of a conga... i can even stay in time for a little while by myself doing that basic bass snare, bass cymbal thing that you learn first.... but then i get tripped up, or lose the tempo. I suppose it's a matter of teaching your muscles. When I do a G Chord, I just think "G" and my left hand does it. I don't think "middle finger to the 6th string 3rd fret, first finger to the 5th string 2nd fret, pinky to the 1st string 3rd fret."

you can probably just think 4-4 or whatever you call your things and your body does it.

like driving a car.

...or, thinking a word at the keyboard and your fingers type it.

(Of course, that's just among the generations before the iPad !)

That's pretty much how lil' griff describes the different skill sets as well. Clod, you may think you don't want that sound in your house but when your teenage girl comes home pissed at the world and hammers out Toxicity in the basement leaving her mood behind, you appreciate the percussion.

Ask Pooka, this is very effective. Some days I come home and go straight for the drums, 15 minutes later I come out, dripping sweat, but perfectly calm. There has been a horrific cacophony of intensely subdivided notes--all four limbs in high gear. And right before this happens, my neighbor has seen a spectacled, gray-haired, professor-type in a cardigan sweater quietly stepping out of his little Honda and going in the house.

It's either this, or murder people.



And I agree, Toxicity is great for this purpose.

For advanced stress relief, something like Fire and Flames. And then you're getting a cardio workout, also.

Most musical instruments can be mastered technically by study and practice, but with drums, if you don't feel it, don't have that groove in your gut, you'll never be great.

The Millimeter, aged 5 1/2 talking about a playgroup friend:

“He’s pretty dumb for his age.”
Me: “Why do you think that is?”
“Because he’s dumb and he’s six. Six year olds are wise at that age.”

That age!

My slightly older niece, talking about some CCD event, after I told her it sounded like fun (but I didn't mean it)...says, not brattily or anything...just resignedly and quietly to me: It's NOT fun. We just sit there and look at books that say "Jesus said 'do this.'"

My youngest niece had her first confession. I said "Oh NO, did you have to tell him about the hobo you killed?"

And all three girls laughed and laughed. Hobo humor, they haz it.

:D

Of course they laughed. There's no penance for hobo killin'!

This one is funny, to SonofV. This same one is kind of embarrassing to me, but also very gratifying as a demonstration of his feelings. Twil and I came home from the grocery store the other day, arms full of bags of food, and Sonof/V was practically hopping up and down to share something with us. In the kitchen is an under counter radio/cd player with an aux input/3.5mm headphone plug. There we are trying to unload the groceries and he says, "You have to see this". So he takes his phone, finds a YouTube video, cues it up, plugs in his phone to the radio and says "check this out, soooo funny!" with the biggest smile on his face.

There we are putting the food away when this video starts to play. Loudly. We couldn't see the screen very well, but upon rewatching/relistening I can tell you the expressions on our faces are well represented on the faces of the actors in this video. But we certainly heard it loud and clear. SonofV was laughing hysterically.



It's funny because he's a high school boy. It's embarrassing because, well, that's not really mixed generation/kitchen radio material--not without some kind of preface or bourbon anyhow. But I do love how it demonstrates how comfortable he is with the three of us. *That* makes me smile.