Eleven is the new social awareness. I took my eleven year old niece to the Iron Pigs game a few weeks ago. We had tickets to a batting practice viewing, but since her younger brother decided not come along with us, the allure was far less compelling for two chic chicks. Instead we found ourselves driving around town looking for sunglasses and flip flops.
I remember being little and having a thousand questions and asking about things people didn’t think I could know. Television can be a great educator if we allow it to be. It is for this reason I am surprised when I am surprised by her questions and comments.
With all the inflection of shock and horror of someone three times her age, she recounted to me that she saw Lady Gaga on the Grammys wearing a meat dress. “Her dress was made out of meat.” She said. To which I internally cried that she knew who Lady Gaga is and that she is now inundated with crazytown, the world in which she lives. I tried to move the conversation to things more wholesome with little skill. I got out my ipod and played some songs I thought she would like. She likes Pink, so seemingly innocuous after Gaga. While listening to Pink I found some others I thought she would like. I played a Beatles song she didn’t know, but she correctly guessed the band, and then told me her favorite song of theirs was Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. She knows it doesn’t mean anything; she just likes it, along with Sgt. Pepper, Eleanor Rigby, and Hey Jude. I’ve never been so proud!
The night was full of fun at a baseball game, meeting up with Aunt Jen, food that is overpriced, almost missing the fireworks because of getting the best corn on the cob in the world, getting trinkets at the stand, and soda again being spilled.
Before the night was over I was told her first date would be at Friendly’s, asked when disco died and even more alarmingly asked what she would be like if she was a gangster, made her eat a hotdog given to us by one of Molinari Oswald’s clients, and educated on the proper etiquette at a baseball game waiting to go to our seats.
When the game was over we sat in the car until the lines were gone. While we waited, I got out the ipod again and she found the Veggie Tales album and we started singing along to the Second Chances song. It was fun to sing and be crazy with our water bottle microphones and the freedom to pretend to be gospel singers. She told me I should go on America’s Got Talent for Opera. I thanked her, but assured her I haven’t got the talent for that. It is nice to know that though she is eleven and knows who Lady Gaga is, is learning the Beatles masterpieces, and questions how she would be as a gangster; she still likes hanging out with me singing into impromptu sound amplification systems in front of imagined crowds of fans. I always knew we would get along just fine, but there is nothing like looking over and wondering if she is having fun and knowing by the look in her eye she is. And more than that, knowing I had something to do with it!
