The Fever

Typically, this blog is not the place I go to air private issues between Sonya and myself.  I’m making an exception this time.  Another man has come between Sonya and me.  He’s driving a wedge between us and seriously jeopardizing the health of our marriage.  He’s been in my house.  Who is this man?  Funny you should ask.  This man, or boy I should say, is an androgynous 16 year-old from Canada.  That’s right.  It’s Justin Bieber.

 

This person is ruining my life.

 

It’s not that Sonya has been secretly seeing Justin Bieber, at least not to my knowledge.  It’s that she’s introduced him and his music into our home and, subsequently, got our girls hooked on his shit.  Justin Bieber, you see, is like herpes.  Once you get him you can’t ever really get rid of him.  Yesterday, I had to listen to the song “Baby” five times in a row.  Think of it as an outbreak.  I need an ointment.

 

When Sonya first downloaded a Justin Bieber song for Nayezca, I was livid.  Not because he’s a sixteen year-old white boy who raps about love but sounds like his gonads are trapped somewhere in his abdomen.  Not because he has a music video where he and his prepubescent friends have a house party in Usher’s house with no alcohol but rather spray each other with silly string.  Not because it was the worst $1.29 our family has ever spent.  I was livid because before Sonya bought that song, Nayezca had never heard of Justin Bieber.  It was as if she introduced crack to our home.  (Yes, in case you’re keeping score at home, I’ve just compared Justin Bieber to an incurable STD and a devastating drug in consecutive paragraphs.  Please help me get this blog post to the top spot on Google when someone searches for Justin Bieber.  Thanks.)

 

What’s really in play here is my disdain for shitty teenybopper pop and the reality that shitty teenybopper pop is probably going to be a presence in my life for a long time.  It’s even less about the crappy music or that well-established rappers such as Ludacris will jump onto the track to rap about a crush they had at the age of 13, but more about the visual of my 7 year-old daughter gleefully swaying her hips to and singing this stuff.  As I stewed the other day, Sonya sweetly came up to me and cajoled me to take it easy.  “Phil, we have girls, this is what girls do.  They like this type of music, they have crushes on the singers, it’s normal.  Just deal with it.  You have two daughters.  I remember when I was a kid I was madly in love with Fred Savage.  I had pictures of him on my wall and everything,” and she walked away laughing.  You can imagine how reassured I was knowing my wife was madly in love with Fred Savage.

 

I mean, seriously, how could anyone not have a crush on him?

 

Not to say I’m exactly guilt-free in the conversation of what kind of music we introduce to our girls.  Just the other day I downloaded “Get Low” and played it for my girls (with some selected editing, mostly because I didn’t really want to explain what “skeet-skeet” means).  Generally, I have no qualms playing inappropriate music in front of my children (see: “Blame It” or “Don’t Give Me No Bammer Weed”), though I balked this morning when Nayezca said that, yes, she would like to listen to a song with me, but only if it was appropriate.  You might wonder how I can take issue with Justin Bieber when I subject my children to rap verses filled with drugs, sex, violence, and other wholesome topics.  I can’t fault you for wondering.  Sometimes I wonder, too.  There’s just something about rap that feels, well, better than Justin Bieber.  Not that I’m exactly thrilled when my daughters hear some of the misogynistic lyrics in rap, but I’m more confident that I can talk them off the cliff of weed-infused orgies than the cliff of contrived teen love/heartbreak.

 

"Watch out dads. I'm coming to make your daughters fall in love with me. Never mind the fact that I'm a eunuch, I got bling, baby."

 

Sonya’s right.  I should probably just deal with it, stop making passive-aggressive comments about Justin Bieber, and move on to other important topics like convincing Sonya it’s time for our family to exercise our second amendment rights.  There’s this piece of me, however, that just can’t let go of the desire to dig my heels in and make it a major parenting struggle that I won’t back down from.  The problem with digging my heels in, however, is that we’ve already caught Justin Bieber in our home and he’s incurable.  We’re screwed.  Send me some ointment, please.

 

It's unclear whether or not the FDA has done a study to determine if Zovirax actually helps manage Justin Bieber outbreaks, but please just send some to Tucson just in case.