Michael playing "Hotel California" by The Eagles…the long version.
My oldest son Michael is what I call a bonafide music geek. He has been learning to play the guitar for a little over a year now. His taste in music is quite eclectic, and I definitely know he gets his musical interests from my husband and me. He does occasionally listen to popular music, but his heart lies with classic rock and even some of the tunes I listened to at his age, so it makes me immensely glad that we rarely fight over the radio when riding in the car. He loves Rush, Led Zepplin, Bob Marley, Nirvana, The Beatles, Jethro Tull, The Beastie Boys, and much more awesome music.
Last year, he asked for a guitar for Christmas. He had been taking lessons once a week at an after school art and education center that he and his brother attend twice weekly, called the Renzi Center. His skills were really starting to bud, but he needed something to practice on at home. Since my husband was still deployed to Iraq when it was time to hunt down a guitar, I enlisted my brother-in-law Sean, the guitar player in the family, to help me find a decent one at a reasonable price. We got lucky and found an acoustic Sigma at a local pawn shop. Sean took it for a few days, replaced and tuned a few chords, cleaned it up and donated one of his old guitar cases for his nephew’s Christmas morning surprise. One of the best gifts we got last year was my husband coming home from his one-year deployment only two days before Christmas, but I digress. The guitar was the second-best gift for Michael, and watching him open it was second-best gift for me. I wrapped the guitar up, in the case, and got really creative with the gift wrap. I left the handle loose and even covered it separately. It was obviously a guitar case, which made it really funny. I couldn’t just put it under the tree though; my parents always tricked me and my sisters on Christmas morning, so I carry on the tradition.
[To read more about Michelle McCrary turned her son into a music geek, head over to GeekMom!]
