The girl has a minor blackberry addiction.
Which is odd because I tried to get the girl to eat blackberries for years, but she hated them until her Nana* fed her some and now she can’t get enough.
Which (thanks to my genes directly inherited from said Nana) led to me singing, “Blackberries singing in the dead of night! Take these broken wings and learn to fly!”
Which led to a mini-Beatles dance party. The boy pulled out his drum pad and joined in. We went from Blackberries (oops, “Blackbird”) to “Back in the U.S.S.R.” to “Birthday.” But the boy was frustrated.
“Can’t you play something other than the Beatles?” the boy asked.
“Why?” I said. “The Beatles are good.”
“Hippies are annoying. They play music on street corners,” he said.
What? “I blame your father!” I yelled. “You are no longer allowed to spend time with your father!”
Adam perked up here. “What?”
“I don’t like your influence on the kids,” I told him.
“I didn’t say anything!” he protested.
“Say it, Boy,” I told the boy.
“Hippies are annoying,” the boy repeated.
“Oh yeah,” Adam said. “I did say that.”
The gauntlet has been thrown. Adam and Nathan don’t like it when I play the Beatles? Well, they’ll really freak when the Grateful Dead come out…. “Riding that train. High on cocaine….”
*Note, I do know that “Nana” used in this manner is actually a common noun and should be lowercased, but–and this applies going forward in this blog so I will not make note of this again–I make the editorial decision to capitalize because she really is “the Nana.”
[edited: Adam asked, “Did you put that disclaimer in there just for Peter [my dad]?” I said, “I put it in for anyone who knows proper grammar and might think I made a mistake.” He responded, “So you put it in for Peter.” Whatever.]
