Kid Amnesiac

Remember how you were with albums when you were a kid? (And if you were a kid in the post-album era, keep that quiet, eh.) How you would rush to get one and then play it over and over and over again? How, after a few months, you had so overplayed your new favorite album that you were getting sick of it and before too long never wanted to hear it again. Remember that?

Well, that’s how Simon is acting right now with “A Hard Day’s Night”, and I greatly fear that before too long I’m going to be sick to death of the Beatles. As someone whose brothers groomed her to be a Beatles fan (posters in both brothers’ rooms, first album given to me at 10),  this is an unforgivable heresy. You may intermarry, eat a cheeseburger, or skip a Rosh Hashanah service in my family, but you don’t diss the Beatles!

Simon’s Beatlemania is a classic case of being careful of what you wish for. We were perfectly happy to have him listen to the usual kid favorites and promised each other that we would not be the parents who denigrate songs like “If You’re Happy and You Know It” while foisting our preferred songs on our kid. And we didn’t. Simon has all the usual children’s classics on his MP3 player, and until a year or so ago that was all he was interested in.

Then came The Clash’s “Police on my Back”, an inappropriate song he nevertheless loves because it lists off the days of the week. Then Matt popped “A Hard Day’s Night” into the car CD player a while back, and the rest is history. He loves it! Wants to listen to it all the time. Is learning the lyrics to every song. Fake drums while he hears it. Asks who is singing what part. Tries to harmonize. Has developed a pretty good falsetto (“…and when I ask you to be mi-i-i-ine…”).

Then, on a lark, Matt brought home the movie. This is a 1960s black-and-white feature in the style of a farce featuring four guys in suits who speak softly with thick Liverpudlian accents. He loves it, yeah yeah yeah. Screams when “they run away from the girls”, tells us that Paul’s grandfather is “a villain, a real mixer”, and echoes the final line in the movie “You’re a swine” in his own Brit accent. Then giggles like he gets the joke.

At this point, we are listening to the CD every day, sometimes twice, and also watching the movie daily. And–for the love of John, Paul, George and Ringo–I’m getting a bit tired of it. I know I should count my blessings. At this age, my nephew Ben was obsessed with The Wiggles and young girls often listen to unspeakably bad music. I’ve gotten off lucky, for sure. But still, couldn’t he just give “Revolver” a chance? Or spread the love to “Help!”.

I could write more about this, but I’m off to have Simon’s new Beatles poster framed.