The Hair

Photo by Mrs. Gus

It’s time for me to share some of my parental wisdom with you, it is about all the wisdom I have so don’t go scrambling off anywhere, let me have my say. I am a musician, not a professional musician, wish I was, but I like to play music in front of people and people seem to enjoy it so I guess it works out. I do get paid for it on occasion, just not enough. For me, making music was something that just came naturally, something I enjoyed.
My son is getting ready to enter his teens, well pre-teens really. He has this hair, you would not believe it. His mother talked me into letting it grow about 2 years back and grown it has. Imagine a cross between Robert Plant and Jim Morrison (I know I am dating myself here, but doesn’t everyone know Robert Plant?). Simply put, he has rock-star hair! It is the kind of hair that when people meet him they go “wow nice hair!”. For me this was a no brainer, this kid has to play in a band, hell this kid has to front a band. So I started to drop subtle hints (may not so subtle) that he might want to learn how to play an instrument. I offered to teach him myself (nope), offered to buy him whatever instrument he wanted (nope), offered to get him a teacher (nope) even offered to send him to one of those music camps! Listen, I did pretty much everything except lock him in a room with a guitar and tell him “you ain’t coming out until you can play Smoke on the Water!”
Then this conversation happened
Mrs. Gus “He’s not interested in music right now you know”
Me “Ya I am getting that”
Mrs. Gus “He thinks he’s disappointing you buy not being interested in music.”
Me, total silence. Actually astounded silence that turned into angry silence. I am his father, I know what is best for him! Which turned into guilty silence. I had never even considered his feelings, in fact to be honest, I never even thought he had feelings about it one way or another. I just figured I liked playing music, he is my son, he will like playing music too, case closed.
We have these kids and we want everything for them that we didn’t have. All the great stuff that we didn’t or couldn’t do, they should do. And of course they should be able to do it all, they should be the smartest and the strongest and the fastest. If they can’t, well then they are just not trying hard enough. They should make up for all of our short comings!
THEY SHOULD BE THE BEST!
That is an awful lot of pressure for a little person, and lets not forget they are little people. Kids have their own likes and dislikes, and feelings. They are going to experience things and turn into people just like we did. Hopefully good people.
I don’t care if my kids play music, or do sports, or get straight A’s in school (but A’s are great!), what I want most of all is for them to be happy. What I don’t want are kids that think they have done something wrong because they are not living their lives the way I think they should be living it. I want kids that feel confident enough to question things, show others how they feel and speak up when they believe something is wrong.

So far so good.

Gus