by Ken Tanaka

Created on: January 09, 2009

Many of us don't want our kids listening to gangsta rap or heavy metal because the lyrics are often crude, explicit, hateful, or violent. And the noise is another story. So, we breathe a sigh of relief when our kids express an interest in, say, rock and roll, or ballads, or jazz, or classical, or opera, or country...

Country music! Country music?

You had better suck that sigh of relief back into your gut, and quick! Under the guise of expanding their musical horizons, your kids are only swimming into deeper, murkier waters. They will be singing your ears off with "My Wife She Done Me Wrong" in a thick southern slur before you can say "Kentucky." They will sing it in the car as you drop them off at school in the mornings. They will sing it in detention (which is exactly where they'll go if you don't stop this madness). They will sing it in their sleep. Dear parent; honestly ask yourself Why did you ever have these kids?

Of course I'm joking. You love your son (otherwise you wouldn't have bought him that Ipod, which is at this moment pumping insidious Johnny Cash and Faith Hill songs into his ears). Naturally you want the best for him, and that is: Stealing his ticket to that Carrie Underwood concert and washing it along with his jeans, and I mean the abrasive ones, otherwise the ticket might still be usable.

If that doesn't work, and it won't, your last minute resort will be to buy a ticket yourself and accompany your son to the concert hall. As you drive to the concert hall, consider the following facts about the history of country music.

Country music was developed back in

"Oh Lawd my wife she done me wrong!.oh yes! Mah wife I bartered for a muleoh yes she is nasty an' cruelShe ain't no saint and talks too longoh Lawd mah wife she done me wrong.(banjo break)"

Well, I told you he'd be singing it. Ignore him. As I was saying, country music was developed back in America's colonial days and has influences from the Irish, African-American spirituals, Gospel Music, and Colonel Sanders. William Bradford lured the pilgrims into teaching him how to fish and plant corn by having Dolly Parton (who was still young back then) to hypnotize them by singing the orders.

"Squanto(yodeling)be a darlin' o-yo he-ooand teach this mister Brandford-eooo.How to catch a rainbow (scatting, with a pistachio shell lodged in the upper bronchial tub) trout!(Country fiddle break. Men start whistling and stomping their feet before Dolly breaks out in solo yodeling)Yodeleh yodeloh yodeleh o hee yodoleh oh hee! Old McDonald had a farm. E-I-E-I-O."

Yes. The vowels have often been employed in hypnosis. (Recall that in "My Fair Lady" the professor Henry Higgins hypnotized Eliza Dolittle into wearing a hideous ascot dress simply by feeding her chocolates and incessantly reciting the vowels.) But even Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins cannot be compared to the dark sinister forces of country music.

But I'd better stop now. You've safely made it to the concert hall, and your son is still singing. Sit down with him as far away from Carrie as you can, and try to distract him from the music. It doesn't matter what you say, so long as you're keeping him distracted. ("So, Johnny. How's school been lately? Oh look, that's Amy sitting in front of us. Didn't you go to school together? I think you should have! Is she blonde, or is it just the lighting? Aren't you feeling tired? Have you ever shoplifted before? I think it's about time we had that talk about the birds and the bees")

There is another reason for my asking this of you. If you were wise enough to bring your husband along you for moral support, you will not be able to hear him softly singing, "Oh Lawd Mah wife she done me wrong"

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