Children, they become you.

This may come as a surprise, but I do not have a typical approach to parenting. I have a mind for science, or at least that's what I wrote on the donor card. This leads me to see most moments of life as trial-and-error and empirical experiments.

For example; I now know how to consistently trip a circuit breaker, turn chicken into charcoal and overflow the toilet. As nice as it is to practice science with dinner or perhaps the wiring of the home it is a less acceptable attitude with children.

As a result I parent in the Shesaid fashion, which is to do what She said to do. My wife just happens to be educated in Early Childhood Development and is a bit of a subject matter expert since she's the only one of us to have the children emerge out of.

So I try to be a good person. I know that parenting is important and that I should try to teach my kids to do things and have them do what they should. In the end though no matter how many books I read to them or speeches I give or obedience classes I enroll them in they are doomed to become
just
like
us.

Subject number one is my older daughter, hence the numerical sequence starting at one. (Yes, this would make me nothing and my wife the negative one). Last week she had "electronics day" where she could bring in an mp3 player if she ponied up $2. Her top 5 songs were:

5. My Life on the Crazy Train (Mashup of Ozzy Ozbourne, Pink, Kelly Clarkson and Daft Punk)
4. The Final Countdown (Europe)
3. Axel F (Crazy Frog)
2. The Safety Dance (Men Without Hats)
1. Code Monkey (Jonathan Coulton, censored by Dad)

She wanted to play Code Monkey for her class. 9 year old girl wanting to play a joke song about a programmer's lame life instead of High School Musical. I'd worry about it except I'm confident it will keep all but the nerdy boys away from her, and I'm pretty sure I can take them.

At home she choreographed an epic dance number to "The Final Countdown". This was like Footloose meets Cats on Red Bull. She listened to the song about 10 times in a row. I was about to give her my own final countdown.

Not geeky enough? She recently watched Tron for a second time. She liked it so much the first time she needed another fix. Then I was her hero by downloading light cycle games and we played together much to our collective amusement.

The end conclusion I can derive is that the kids will become like us whether we like it or not, so we had better be the best people we can be. And learn to like more popular music for the sake of their social status.

In the meantime I have to say I have one of the coolest 9 year olds ever.