My 13-year-old son Ben has been learning how to play the guitar.
He's a self-teacher, the only kind of teaching that ever happens in our house. Ben is sort of like that -- he likes learning new things.
And it's becoming a problem.
You see, Ben is a drummer. It's been decided. Ben has been drumming for neigh on four years now. We tend to pick his "accessory" instruments as percussion-related.
He has an awesome set of bongos and I've been looking into buying him something called a bodhran that looks pretty cool. It's a Celtic thing. We like Celtic things. And we like drums.
So Ben is a drummer, Callum plays guitar, Jack plays a
fledgling keyboard and Nathan . . . Nathan is simply a rock star. Period. He tells me he doesn't need skills to be a rock star because he's already a rock star. Fair enough.
Secretly I think Nathan would make a great lead singer -- he has the pipes and the attitude that all great lead singers need. It would be fairly handy if Nathan was willing to round out our little family band like that. We could be like the Osmonds but cool, less Mormon-y.
I was thinking I could even be their band manager . . . although probably not. They already know too much about my less-than-stellar managerial skills. Still, we had our band locked down, tight as a drum. Until we lost the drummer.
Ben is simply refusing to fall in line these days. He's been playing around with his traditional role a bit too freely. I've tried explaining to him -- he
can't become a guitarist now. We don't need two guitarists, for Pete's sake! Who will be our drummer? Particularly considering the fact that he won't let any of us touch his drum kit?
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