Party Girl

I have promised DH that I will not expose the children to hip-hop or rap. Stated mildly, DH does not care for these genres of entertainment (he will not deign to call them music).  Even though He'en writhes in her carseat protesting she does not "yike" the classical music on the radio, he persists.  His kids are going to get some decent cultchah come hell or high water.

In this, I fear, he finds me a sloppy ally. For several years now, I have been carefully avoiding the issue of whether "club" falls into the "hip-hop or rap" category of child-poison. 

Poor DH. When he met me, he thought he was getting a refined intellectual type who would be a fit mother to his heirs. I had a reasonable command of current events, a bluffer's knowledge of opera, several years of ballroom dance experience, a basic ballet vocabulary, and enough classical music moxy to prove acceptable to a man who had grown up with the kids of Philadelphia Orchestra musicians and had studied piano at a conservatory in his youth. Little did he know that, ten years down the road, his wifely prize would disintegrate into a 40-year-old hip-hop-loving mall rat. 

The warning signs were there, of course. During our early dating days, we had some stellar squiffs over my tendency to be unavailable on nights when a good drag show hit Fort Lauderdale.

"You can come," I cheerfully invited him by phone between applications of black-cherry lipstick.

"Go there with you? I can't believe you would go to those . . .  things!" he huffed. "What if you want a judicial career someday? Someone might see you!"

"If they see me," I would counter, holding the phone with my chin to tighten my leather dog collar choker, "It would be because they were also there."

Well, we never did really resolve that issue. We just moved away from the scene, settled into quiet coupledom, and then I got too old and too busy for such delicious pursuits.  Days turned to weeks, then months, then years, and along came Offspring #1, which permanently ended any chances for such foolishness.

When Offspring #1 was about six weeks old, I wistfully noted that the last time I saw such early-morning numbers on the clock, I had been clubbing in Miami. 

From my mouth to God's ears: Offspring #2 was inconsolable tonight until I moved her into the kitchen and put fired up my "Shakira Channel" on Pandora.  As soon as the dance beats began, she quit thrashing in her lounger, spit out her pacifier, belched peacefully, and settled into a blissful sleep.

That's my girl, my little party girl.