those were the days, my friend

you'd never fool him now

I guess we're still in the aftermath of Christmas. Families are still doing things together (I saw Miss Potter with my friend and her kids yesterday) and, well, just thinking about each other in a slightly different way. Dave Hill (the only person I know who can casually refer to "my sixthborn" - and I come from a big family) went to see Happy Feet with his three youngest kids, and, via the agency of the Beach Boys, had a whole train of thought which Ms B has had many times in the past, too.

Our generation is not as previous ones. Our kids are listening (and believe me, I have resented it! Try sitting there reading the paper while your own kid co-opts "Tainted Love" right out from under you) to our music. They no longer feel the need to rebel by rejecting everything we once held dear. Our music is directly where today's pop came from - there would be no possible credibility to be gained by rejecting, say, Sister Sledge or Sly Stone. So they steal our vinyl and our mojo with it.

In the case of my middle-born, the Tall Blond Rock God, this syndrome has been taken to an extreme. He plays bass. He loves "vintage rock." He listens to Pink Floyd, okay, and Led Zeppelin by the gigabyte, and Black Sabbath and Aerosmith and tons of others. Well - all the others. I started it. I gave him The Wall for Christmas when he was 11. (And now he's always late for school! & I ask myself why...?!? Like, du-uh.)

But what cracks me up is the other stuff he comes out with. "Mummy," he'll go. "I've been listening to this band all week, Canned Heat?" Or, "Have you ever heard of somebody called 'Jethro Tull'?" I love to mock him for his dad-rock tastes - and as if to thank me he gave me a double-CD set of Tom Petty for Christmas. (YESSS!)

But there was a time when even my savvy kids were naive little products of nineties pop culture, who knew only what they were told on CBBC.

One day when my eldest, who is now an Urban Warrior and into "stencil art" but at that time was a fresh-faced thing who wanted to be a cartoonist (it might yet happen), was about 10 or 11, I bought something I thought my best friend might get a kick out of. It was a sheet of disco-themed wrapping paper, purple, with a repeating pattern of pictures of disco balls, platform shoes, and the head of Michael "Jackson 5" Jackson.

I showed it to the Future Urban Warrior and said, do you think she'll like it? He appraised it earnestly, but also coolly, and said yes, he thought she'd love it. But he goes, "the only thing I don't get is - who's that guy?"

I tried to be gentle. I said casually, "Oh, you know - that's Michael Jackson, when he was about 13, in the Jackson 5, you know..."

He blanches, he falls back, his mouth drops open. He says to me finally - "y-you mean - is Michael Jackson - black??"

Oh, how we larfed.