Mason’s officially on Christmas Break, which unfortunately just means he goes to daycare instead of going to school. He doesn’t mind; it’s like a mini-reunion up there with all his old daycare friends.
One of his friends has been bringing their Nintendo Wii to daycare this week, and apparently Mason promised to bring Rock Band for everyone to play. When I was informed of his little plan last night, I said no way. I don’t need two dozen kids beating on our drums, breaking my guitars and dropping my microphone. Of course this caused Mason to completely melt down and cry for two hours solid.
Finally, an agreement was reached — I would take leave from work for a couple of hours this afternoon and bring Rock Band.
I cannot begin to explain how hectic the afternoon was and God bless the teachers over at the daycare who deal with kids every single day. As I told one of them, “This whole experience has reminded me how much I enjoy working with computers.”
The kids, however, had a blast. I ended up organizing the kids into six “bands” of three. Each band got two songs, and on each song I made them switch up the instruments so everybody got a chance to try something different (or, more to the point, nobody got stuck singing twice). Drums were by far the most popular instrument, and I saw many styles throughout the afternoon: some kids actually played them like drums, others played them like bongos (without the sticks) and one kid (I dubbed “Animal,” from the Muppet Show) just beat the crap out of everything within reach every chance he got.
Some of the kids had obviously never played Rock Band or Guitar Hero. Some of those kids “got it” and others didn’t. The ones that didn’t snuck away from the group pretty quickly. I tried to make sure everybody got an equal amount of tries, but I also understand not wanting to learn something new in front of your peers.
If anything, Mason got less play time than everyone else simply because he can play it at time. I did let him show off in front of his friends a few times, of course.
When karaoke became big and I had a small home system, I volunteered to let the school I work at use it on their kids picnic day. That worked OK as long as I was the DJ and oversee-er of it. We all had a lot of fun and laughs. Until the kids and songs got more R-rated than me. When I had to start censoring both music and moves, I called it quits. The next year, my karaoke machine “was not working anymore”. I am definitely getting too old.