My parents always complain that they’re out of touch with my generation. They say they’re “distant,” “unaware of culture nowadays” and “not hip.” I prefer the term “ancient,” since the fact that they still use the word “hip” says a lot about them.
So I agreed to give them their much-desired experience of American pop music. I put together a playlist of the most popular music from the past year and played it to them for approval.
My mother was dismayed. “Where’s ‘American Pie’? Where’s ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’? Those are American classics!” I’m fairly certain that she’s unaware that a lot of her favorite “classics” contain references to weed. They’re about American culture too, I suppose, but mostly weed.
Because my family can’t stand to be left out of anything, they insisted on singing along to every song they listened to. But after a childhood filled with homemade rockets and forest fires, my father’s hearing — though he refuses to admit it — has obviously deteriorated. So when Nicki Minaj’s “Pound the Alarm” came on, he wasn’t exactly on par with the lyrics.
“You know we’re getting hotter and hotter, we’ll shut ’em down — plow the alarm!”
“No, Father, it’s pound the alarm. Pound. Not plow.”
“Oh! That makes a lot more sense. We’ll shut ’em down — plow the farm! You know, it’s really great that America is returning back to its agrarian roots. It reminds me of my college days back in Iowa.”
My mother, on the other hand, was highly disappointed with the quality of pop music nowadays. According to her, rap is just someone talking ridiculously fast. But once she realized this, her fact lit up.
“Carissa, you can be a rapper!” she told me. “You have ADHD, so you talk really fast.”
“Mother, I don’t have ADHD.”
“Nonsense. A lot of people seem to think you do. Maybe you should go to the doctor and get tested.”
After they finished listening to the playlist, my family finally delivered their verdict: “Gangnam Style,” “Payphone” and all songs by Adele were winners. “What Makes You Beautiful” was somewhat a winner. “Call Me Maybe” was not a winner.
My family’s favorite song, though was — by far — “Party Rock Anthem.” Even our four-year-old golden retriever, Sierra, adored it. When it came on the radio while we were riding in the car, all 60 pounds of her scrambled onto my lap and she stuck her head out the window, howling along to the music. My family shrieked with excitement.
“Every day I’m shuffling!” all three of them whooped. And when they decided that the voices of three humans and a dog didn’t do the song justice, they used their new webcam to drag my 21-year-old brother into the action.
“Now we can have Cupertino-style shuffling, San Diego-style shuffling and old people-style shuffling,” my sister said with satisfaction.
Throughout the next several weeks, there was a lot of shuffling going on in my house. But each time my father heard the song, without fail, he sat down on the couch with a sigh and a forlorn expression on his face.
“Father, what are you doing?” my sister finally asked one day.
He mumbled something unintelligible.
“Get up! Shuffle with us.”
“I am. Look at me! I’m suffering. See my sad face?”
“Suffering?”
“Yeah, suffering. ‘Every day I’m suffering.'”
My sister and I exchanged a look.
“No, Father. It’s shuffling. Like shuffling a deck of cards.”
He smiled patiently.
“It’s suffering. But don’t feel bad. Everyone makes mistakes.”
We knew, from years of experience, that convincing him otherwise would be impossible. So my sister and I shrugged and left him to suffer in peace.
