You guys aren’t sick of me bragging about my husband & kids all the time, are you? Ok good. I’ll continue.

Between my 3 boys, they can play: the trombone, guitar, drums, bass, and keyboard. Not only do they play, but can do so without sheet music (except for the trombone), and while singing.

Ok…ok… I bet there are some of you like, “Here she goes again, acting like her kids are the greatest thing since scratch & sniff stickers… ” so I’ll stop.

The real reason I bring this up is because before bed last night, after learning yet another Beatles song on the keyboard and being able to sing all the words, my son said, “I didn’t think I’d be able to play that one at all, but I got it pretty quickly. Maybe that’s not really a big deal though.”

I informed him that what he’s doing is AMAZING. At least to me it is. Here’s my point:

PJ and I have ZERO musical ability. Zilch. Nil. Naught. Our musical ability is so lacking, you could compare it to a better song than Bohemian Rhapsody… there is none.

You get the idea.

My family owned a piano for as long as I can remember and I still can’t play. I took lessons for a year… maybe 10 months… maybe it was 8… I don’t know… I hated it. I quit piano like I quit everything else. (No shame in my game. I’m a firm believer that life is too short to do extracurricular activities you hate.)

The only other instrument I played was the recorder and that’s because it was a mandatory school activity – which is odd to me.

Oh yeah, add the recorder to the list – my youngest is learning it in school now. Uhhh… curriculum update, anyone? 😳 I don’t think they have you tie a piece of pantyhose to a stick to clean it out anymore though 🤢 he hasn’t asked me for an old pair of my L’Eggs yet.

PJ is not musically inclined either. He claims he played the organ (yes, of course I’ve made several off-color jokes through the years re: that comment), and the clarinet.

According to him, he was first chair clarinet in his school orchestra or whatever. I probably wouldn’t believe this, but there’s a picture of him playing, looking very studious, with the straightest posture I’ve ever seen. Teara and I got a hold of the photo and lovingly refer to it as, “the picture of PJ playing clarinet with a stick up his ass.”

PJ being first chair doesn’t impress me since he also told me that once, he forgot his reed and sat there moving his fingers around pretending to play 🤣 I remind my kids of this when they’re nervous before their school concerts. I say, “Relax, you can just sit there and pretend to play like daddy did. No one will ever know the difference!”

The other reason I’m suspect over PJ’s claim to any musical talent is because he HATED practicing. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: PJ’s summers where ruined because of the clarinet.

He’d be playing in the pool with his BFF Donnie and Mr. Becker would come along and spoil the fun with a clarinet lesson.

I can just imagine poor little soaking-wet PJ, moping away from the pool, “I gotta go, Mr. Pecker is here…” (That’s not a typo. It’s what PJ called Mr. Becker because he was mad at him for spoiling his summer fun.)

That leads me to another point. I NEVER forced my kids to play instruments, and guess what… now they genuinely enjoy it because it was their choice.

And music lessons? … pssshhh save your money! There’s this newfangled thing the kids are using today called YouTube – it’s where they learned it all! (Except for the trombone, so thank you to all the music teachers who taught my boys to read sheet music. I promise they never made up names depicting you as something phallic.)

So yeah, my kids are pretty much musical phenoms – at least in the opinion of their musically incompetent parents.