We Got Ourselves A Rock Chick

Although I filed this post under ‘I Made This’, it is not about any successful person. This is about an inspiring person. Well, she is not a person yet, if you ask me, not a complete one, anyway. Because she is only almost 7. This post is about The Kid and how she sometimes makes us laugh without even being conventionally funny.

For those of you who don’t know, The Kid is Alin’s almost-7-year-old Carla. I won’t say she is amazing, cuz, you know, I am not her mum and I can see her faults sometimes, but I can totally see how her personality is jammed in there somewhere, and how gracefully it unfolds.

We went to the Apple Store Garage Band lesson because, you know, Carla’s been rapping around.

No kidding, literally rapping and improvising, how do kids call it these days … freestylin’, which, you know, makes me want to whaaaaaa …?! When I was her age I was … making mud pies. But I mean, c’mon, it’s ok, I am a late bloomer. And plus she’s only sometimes singing cool stuff. Now, for example, she is watching a cartoon where somebody farts.

I am not going to tell about the colorful experience at Apple Store, you all know how that story goes. I will say, however, that the two guys in charge of the Garage Band lesson kids were nice and a bit boring.

They started the lesson by teaching the kids how to play one instrument, create a baseline for a song, then add another one and so on.

I lost track at some point. You know me and music were born in different universes. My universe rules the music-universe so, we, in my universe, only listen to music, we do-not-make-it. Because we know we suck at it.

The last point of the Garage Band lesson was introducing some artificial sounds, the kind that makes a song sound chill or, on the contrary, a very loud soul violating one.

Steve, or what’s his name, recommended the kids only use one or two of those musical bits in their newly-created song, you know, for …cool effects. I know this because at that particular time I had finished the bet with myself about how long was the beard of one of the Apple representatives and I had come up with a plan how to really measure it, so I didn’t have anything else to do.

The lesson ended in the delirious amazement of Steve and his buddy who proposed kids play the musical pieces they composed out loud. Nobody dared for a bit until a future Norah Jones timidly raised her hand. Her song was mellow, off beat from time to time, but I am guessing that is ok when you are about 8 or 9. Another, more joyous girl followed, her song was as unremarkable as most of our lives are. It sounded pretty bad, but nobody cared, you can get away with a lot of shit when you are little.

Then Carla, who usually likes to keep it to herself, encouraged by the others, said she too wants to have her song played out loud.

Alin had already listened to it and I believe his words were “it’s a bit loud”. Understandable. I saw Carla abusing those buttons on the iPad, but hey, we had come there for fun.

The moment when poor Steve pressed play I will remember forever. It was as if Satan itself had come up with a song to torture all the Britney Spears and the Lana Del Reys out there. Sorry, down there. It was like cats being murdered, dinosaurs running, planes being crashed and burned at the same time. I could picture my eardrums being stripped, piece by piece.
I started to laugh like a mad person. People around me didn’t know what was freakier. A sweet kid making the music from hell, or her ‘mom’ laughing at her. I had this picture in my head, think it was in a movie, don’t say Chuckie, where something similar had happened. Or maybe was it Friends when Ross was playing the bagpipe? The more I thought about it, the more I laughed, the more people stared. Or so it seemed. It was a vicious circle that lasted for full 30 seconds.

Of course, nobody said anything bad about Carla and they were all nice like in every politically correct society.

I also know she was messing around. I can’t explain it otherwise, because she is so good at doing some things at home. Even if she wasn’t I’d really want to take her back there but with a hidden camera this time. Make some money at least.

At the very end, Steve comes to us and says “I believe we got a rock chick on our hands. You should bring her more often. I can tell by your face, you were a rock chick once when you were younger.” Oh, Steve! Why did you have to make it and break it all in one sentence?!