My Summer Fling With B-96

The flirtation, like so many of these things, was fun until it wasn’t.

I usually spend my free time in the sober company of NPR, but this summer, every time I drove my daughters to daycamp or the beach, the girls would call out, “Turn on B-96, please!”

I’d push the button on the car radio and up popped a beat-heavy song of the summer, filling our ears with the mindless groove, making me smile, making me feel like a kid again.

School was out; we wore flipflops. The open sunroof let in a warm jetstream.

My girls and I joyously descended from the intellectual heights of our usual music, the kid-friendly science of our old friends They Might Be Giants (“I am a Palentologist!” “Triops has Three Eyes!”), down to the mindless drivel of someone called Taio Cruz (“And I told you once/Now I told you twice/We’re gonna light it up/Like it’s dynamite!”)

Chanting Enrique Iglesias back and forth with my five year old made me giddy with glee.

Mom:  Baby, I like it!

Nora:  The way you move on the floor!

Mom:  Baby, I like it!

Nora:  Come on and give me some more!

The radio station has a set list only about six songs long, so we could always depend on tuning in to something we knew. My children, who thrive on repetition and dependability, cheered when the same song we heard on the way to the zoo was the one we heard on the way home. And since I thrive on shaking my thang, I could get swept up and ignore for a while the ick of the lyrics.

“Baby’s got a bootie like pow pow pow! Baby’s got some boobies like wow oh wow…” We had rocketed from G-rated to PG-13 in the blink of an eye.

Switching at the girls’ request from a Ralph Covert CD to the most puerile of stations, I often had a guilty feeling mixed with a itchy desire to just lighten up – the same feeling I have when the girls ask to watch The Three Stooges video my husband bought. How bad could it be? I wondered. Pretty bad, it turns out.

Once I started listening carefully, I fretted about the sexism of the lyrics and the DJ banter, about the casual sexuality, the accepting attitudes toward female exploitation and materialism, the carelessness about drug and alcohol use and abuse…then Whoop! “California Gurls” came on, the infantile beat grabbed me in the gut and I couldn’t help bouncing in my seat.

I tried telling myself there comes a point in pop music, as in the great tradition of slapstick comedy, where the stupidity grows so large that it turns back on itself and becomes something approaching genius. Right? Right? Right? This argument for exposing my daughters to developmentally inappropriate imagery collapsed when I heard my seven year old laughing out loud at Nelly. “It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes!”

“He’s taking off his underwear!” laughed Mia. Which actually is pretty funny, but Mia’s giggle was in spite of the intended meaning, not because of it.

When I was pointing out to my disapproving husband the utter ridiculousness of “Wearing all my favorite brands, brands, brands, brands,” Mia asked me, “What does that mean?”

“Something really stupid,” I told her, but I realized she deserved a better answer.

I had been counting on my daughters’ ignorance too much. I had been leaning the weight of my parental judgment on the protective barrier of their innocence – a delicate wall that wouldn’t last forever.

With the beginning of the school year, my attraction to the B-96 beat cooled. Explaining to the girls why I was turning off “Love the Way You Lie” and “Sexy B#*ch” got me tangled up in my own illogic. “I don’t like the way the singer is talking about the girl. It’s not respectful or nice.” (“Then why tune in to this station at all?” was the next question I had to ask myself, since the children wouldn’t ask it for me.)

I broke up with my summer radio station. Now when the girls ask, I do the right thing; I say “No.” We’re back to Ralph and Laurie which feels a bit safer. Maybe I’ll invest in a couple of those sanitized Kidz Bop CDs if we crave a dance party.

Okay.

But.

There’s one summer song I’ll miss, but not for the energy of its groove or the joke in the lyrics.

When I first heard the tinkly piano of Bruno Mars’s “Just the Way You Are,” I had to turn and look back at my seven year old in her booster seat. Bruno apparently sings to his girlfriend, but he’s captured in his lyrics something about the way I feel about my little Mia.

Oh her eyes, her eyes

Make the stars look like they’re not shining

Her hair, her hair

Falls perfectly without her trying

She’s so beautiful

And I tell her every day

Last spring Mia fell off her little floor scooter in gym class and cut her upper lip on the floor. I took her to the emergency room in Highland Park and a plastic surgeon fellow stitched her up after the topical anesthetic made her swollen mouth completely numb. She was a brave trouper in the hospital, although I had to work hard to bury my anxiety and keep smiling for her. Now Mia’s mouth bears the tiniest of scars, a small pink line that cuts across and mars the top lip line.

The slightest flaw in her perfect face. She says nothing about it – I’m not sure she even notices, which endears her even more to me. My sensitive oldest. The one with moods of self-doubt that break my heart. My dear, my darling.

Yeah I know, I know

When I compliment her

She won’t believe me

And it’s so, it’s so

Sad to think she don’t see what I see

But every time she asks me do I look okay

I say:

When I see your face

There’s not a thing that I would change

‘Cause you’re amazing

Just the way you are

And when you smile,

The whole world stops and stares for awhile

‘Cause girl you’re amazing

Just the way you are

Someday someone, someone not in her family, is going to want to kiss her there, where the scar is, and Mia will want it to happen. Someday someone else is going think she is beautiful and want to be with that beauty all the time. Someday Mia is going to understand what the hip hoppers are singing about and that energy and the power of her feelings could be the greatest she’s ever known.

I may be able to turn off the radio, but it’s not going away. You have to respect the beat. It carries your children away and we only have a short time to help them learn to navigate those waters and not drown in them.

Photo by Brian Jefferey Beggerly.

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1. The Arts Come Alive at Summer Art Camp

Tags: Cindy Fey

Category: arts, Chicago, girls, Summer