Music is such a subjective thing.  My children and I have a running …I guess it is a joke.  Where some of them like to booby trap me into listening to music I would rather not hear.  I entertain them by my over the top reactions (I think their favourite is me ‘la la la-ing’ with my fingers in my ears), and they work out creative ways to subject me to the dreaded songs.  One of the things they find most entertaining is when one of my least favourite songs happen in an inescapable situation, like the grocery store sound system, because there are very few avenues for me to escape.  The result is usually some unkind grumbling on my part, and behind hand snickers on their part.  The truly unfortunate thing is that many of the songs on my ‘Music I can’t stand’ list are considered popular classic rock music, so the chances of me hearing them in inescapable situations are very high.  Yesterday was one of those moments.

My daughter likes to climb at a local indoor climbing gym.  I try to get her there weekly.  So yesterday I added to the adventure by taking her in the green van.  Well, I discovered that in traffic that some people will use the fact that I am driving an antique vehicle to their advantage by drifting into the side of me so I make way for them to push their way into my lane.  By the time we got to the gym I was well into the hole for my use of colourful curse words.  Once we got to the gym my daughter discovered she forgot her harness at home.  Much unhappiness ensued, me not planning on returning home for the harness, she being distraught over the idea of wearing a rental.  Her unhappiness dwindled, but we continued to be challenged, this time by the effect of the atmospheric humidity on the ropes.  The rope was sticking in the gri-gri (the device the rope passes through to aid the belayer {the person holding the rope at the bottom} with braking under shock load and slowing decent) creating some moments of concern (ie. ‘how I am I going to get her down if I can’t jam the rope through this device?’ and ‘Argh! Too much slack!’).  Adding to this beautiful mother-daughter time the accompanying sound track was Led Zeppelin IV.  Not my favourite, never been my favourite, and I have an unreasonable hate for Stairway to Heaven (and the fact that I know all the words adds to the irritation).  As the final notes of one of my least favourite song faded away and my daughter decided she was going to do one more climb, I had hope the the auditory torture had ended… nope.  Zeppelin was replaced by Supertramp… deep sigh.