Artist Temperament

This is sort of a two-part story about my diva son and his artistic temperament...

Last night, he came running into the kitchen and asked for paper and crayons. I was rather stunned, as he hates drawing/coloring and NEVER asks to do it. But I found him a piece of paper and some crayons, and he set to work on his masterpiece.

Me: So what are you drawing, anyway?
Theo: Um, I'm just writing some music....

He then proceeded to score three songs, which he titled "The Pink Song, "The Neil Diamond Song," and "The Other Neil Diamond Song." And then he grabbed his drumsticks to use as conductor batons and conducted his scores for me. Ha!

So this morning, it was time for our first Music Together class...

Me: Let's finish your breakfast. We need to get you ready to go to music class.
Theo: Feo might play a tuba!
Me: Well, I don't think they have a tuba there, but they have lots of instruments to play and lots of other kids to play with.
Theo (scrambling to find the scores he composed last night): I have to find my paper! I need to bring it! We will conduct my songs!

Clearly, he already thought he was the Arthur Fiedler of the Oakland Hills Music Together class...

And so we set off to Music Together, but it took us almost an hour to get there, due to horrendous traffic that I grumbled about in the car. When we got to class, it turned out that it wasn't so much a place to play  instruments--rather, there were songs to sing and scarves to dance with. As expected, the budding conductor/composer was not amused. In fact, he was quite bored, so he took the opportunity to stand up and announced loudly, "It's time to go. Want to just go sit in traffic instead!"

When traffic trumps a music class, you know it's a bust....

For the record, they had a short five-minute segment of letting the kids play instruments, and Theo came to life for that. He grabbed a wooden xylophone, a couple of drumsticks, and a drum and was a little one-man percussion section. But all too soon that part of the class was over, and he again announced that he'd like to go sit in traffic instead....

You could almost read it on his face: "People, what kind of crappy music class is this? I'm here to play instruments--where's my tuba? Where's my cello? Where's my French horn? Forget it--this isn't worth my time. I'm just going to go sit in traffic instead."

I love that kid...