Monday, April 1, 2013

My Life Doesn't Need a Soundtrack


I’m a non-music person living in a house of music people. My husband and most of my children love to listen to music. Me? Not so much. When I’m cleaning the house, I listen to Pat Benatar or Aretha Franklin. But otherwise, I prefer what little quiet I can get. Maybe it’s because I’m with kids most of the day, and there’s always a buzz of noise in the background. So when the kids want to play music on the stereo, I say, “Let’s leave it off. My life doesn’t need a soundtrack.”

My family thinks that’s insane. So when I get in the car, there may be classical, country, or rock playing. Sometimes I just leave the radio on as a favor to whoever is with me in the car. Occasionally, I’ll recognize a song from the 80s, find myself humming along. And someone will say, “Uh, Mom, you do realize what that song is about, right?” And I say, “I have no idea.” My confused child says, “Don’t you understand the words?” And I say, “No. I’ve never been able to figure out music lyrics. Somehow when words and music are put together, my brain can’t suss it out.” Then, my child tells me what the words are. My face pales and I change the station.

This is why my life doesn’t need a soundtrack, I couldn’t understand it anyway.


n.b. I don’t usually post on Tuesdays, but tomorrow, April 2, is World Autism Day, I’ll be posting on our family’s experiences with autism.

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

5 comments:

  1. I'm the exact opposite. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I realized not everyone had a song humming through their brain at all times. Most of the time I'm not even aware of it until I stop and focus on what it is, but there's always a tune of some sort in my head. I can't even imagine what it would be like to have it be completely silent inside my mind!

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  2. Ha ha, my kids are still at that age where they don't really hear the lyrics to music on the radio stations. The DJs, however, are a different thing altogether.

    Now I have this vision of you vacuuming to "Love is a Battlefield."

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  3. I'm also in the group that always has a song running through my brain. What I really hate is when "there's a crack in the record" and I keep re-playing the same part over and over and over. I wake up in the middle of the night and usually a song is still playing. There must be a happy medium between complete silence and non-stop music :>)

    I do like upbeat music to drive to and most anything playing in the background in the house. I'm definitely a music-listening person, but not DJ-radio stuff. Radio talk puts me to sleep in no time. I like Sirius in the car and my mp3 player in the house or on long car trips, since I own more music than Sirius does :>)

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  4. Music has always been a great part of me. I don't sing (at least don't have a good voice to sing) but that doesn't stop me from keeping the songs running through my head.

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  5. I'm the same way, actually! I might enjoy the beat, but there's only a few artists whose lyrics I actually listen to. Mildly tone-deaf so the artistic side of music is completely lost on me. But I still like music, so having it on doesn't bother me, and it's usually catchy.

    Which is going to make my next WIP interesting, since the main character will be highly musical...

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