Musical Tastes

Miss Ridley got her own room a couple of weeks ago, and within days the walls hosted two Justin Bieber posters and one Beatles poster. She's seven years old!

I think I started listening to the radio when I was nine. That would have been in 1959, and I remember, still, many of the songs. I had a radio in my bathroom (yes, I had my own bathroom), and I would spend hours in there singing along to the music. (No, I don't know why the radio wasn't in my bedroom. Some facts defy memory.)

My mother would drive me to school, four miles away, about a 15-minute drive. In the afternoons I would tune the car radio to the station I wanted (WLOF?) and she would turn it off. She severely disliked my preferred music. As I think back, I don't remember her ever turning the radio on to listen to music. She would occasionally sit down to play the piano, but I was too naive to know it was impolite to call from the other room, "That's a C#, not a C." Pretty soon she quit playing the piano when I was around. (Sorry, Mom.)

(Daddy, on the other hand, had music going constantly. Ballads from the 40s or good hot New Orleans jazz. He was the one who introduced me to Ferrante & Teicher and Gilbert & Sullivan operettas and Broadway show tunes. Some of my favorite memories of him were his sitting, after a day spent standing in the operating room, in the recliner in his all-red den. The stereo played a favorite jazz record, a baseball game was in progress on the muted TV in front of him, and he was working the daily crossword puzzle out of the Orlando Sentinel. (My introduction to crossword puzzles came as I sat at his feet and tried to answer the clues he gave me.) And you wonder why I'm the ultimate multi-tasker?)

(In another side-note, as crazy as Ridley is about JB, Boston is equally disdainful of him. If we're in the car and a JB song even comes on in a commercial, Boston commands me to change the station. I don't know what fuels his hatred, but it is strong!)

I preferred music when there weren't music videos to accompany them. I just love the music and the accompaniment and want to form my own mental images. Why does everything have to be so produced? I actually saw JB perform once on a TV show, and the only word that came to mind was "contrived."

My feelings—and Boston's—aside, I heard something on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" last weekend that blew me away. Did you know that, at any time, 3% of Twitter's servers are filled with tweets regarding Justin Bieber? 3%! According to a Twitter employee, they have "racks of servers" dedicated to him. Can you say "phenomenon?" That's a whole lot of tweetin' goin' on!

My opinion of JB? I just want to grab his head and muss up that perfect hair. No sixteen-year-old boy should have hair that perfect!