Saturday Mom Confession #4
Monday, November 3, 2008 at 1:20AM 
I know it isn't Saturday today, but I'm a rebel like that and Tressa won't hold it against me.
My confession is this: I hate listening to The Goobers practice piano. Sure, I think it's wonderful that they are learning to play. They just keep on getting better and better and enjoying themselves more and more, but oh, my bleeding ears!
You see, I've been cursed with an extreme sensitivity to music. When it's good, it's very, very good, but when it is bad, it is horrid. (My mother used to say that old nursery rhyme to me all the time - I've never understood why.) It's a big part of the reason I don't like to go church - sometimes the music actually causes me physical pain. And then there's the sharing of the peace, in which I am required to touch and be touched by many people. Shudder. I wonder if I'd have been one of those "sensory issue" kids if I'd been born a few decades later than I was.
Anyway, listening to The Goobers practice is enough to send me right over the edge. It isn't entirely their fault; our piano is a rental, and it's jingly and jangly and dreadfully out of tune. Their music program (Piano Adventures) isn't known for its musicality, at least in the beginning levels. And then there's the fact that I'm overly sensitive and should probably be in therapy. But God love 'em, when they play I am reminded of the old Muppets sketch with Fozzie Bear and Rowlf the Dog:
"I don't got rhythm, I DON'T got rhythm,"
YouTube is fantastic. I just spent 15 minutes watching Batman and Robin. And no, that has nothing to do with this post; I just figured that as long as I was confessing, you might as well hear it all.
It wouldn't be so bad if they'd just practice their songs and ignore the piano the rest of the day, but no. Someone is always butchering Bach (my father assigned them some Bach the last time he visited - Piano Adventures was getting on his nerves) or figuring out the X-Files theme song or some such thing. And now that they have a new piano teacher, they are required to play together. So I get to listen to them playing out of rhythm with the metronome (the one that's ticking in my head) AND out of rhythm with each other! Woo-hoo!
