While driving back to our hotel from the local zoo today, we were listening to satellite radio and Bret Michaels, from the 80s hair band “Poison” was a guest dee-jay (oh my God, am I dating myself by using that term? I don’t know what else it would be called…) and even though I was never a hair band or heavy metal fan, he had a playlist that was like a walk down memory lane from my teen years. We were head banging in the car, my little 2-year old in the back seat, my husband and myself. And we were having so much fun. She was whipping her little blond head to and ‘fro and I was very, very impressed.

But then, Bret went a different route and played a song by Tim McGraw that I don’t really know the words too, it’s a few years old. Something about living like you were dying. And although I don’t know the actual words to the song, the chorus is catchy and I figured it out almost before he sang it. And I started to sing. At the top of my lungs. And I love to sing. I mean I really, really love to sing. A little known fact about me: as a child, I would go to sleep every night and say a silent prayer to the musical Gods that I would wake up with a killer singing voice – like a Gospel singer. And even though that wish never came to be, I still love to sing. So, we were in the car, and I was into it, and suddenly, my daughter screamed “No, mama! Stop! No! Stop singing!” And she held up her little hand in the “stop” position, palm facing out. And her little body was tensed up and she meant business. And so I stopped singing. She was fine. But then that catchy chorus came around again, and so I started to sing. And she went nuts again. And I have to secretly admit that I was a little annoyed with her because she’d torn up a precious little butterfly hat that we bought for her at the zoo, so I just kept singing. Torturing her, apparently. And I took a little joy in it. Is that so wrong?

Anyway, when the song ended, she made it clear that I was not to sing any more. Ever. “No sing, mama. Stop!”

But she didn’t mean it. Because as soon as I started to hum the “Barney” theme song, she couldn’t get enough of my singing. She made my husband and I sing that song over and over and over all the way back to the hotel. Each time we finished, she’d yell “more, more!” You know what? I think that was her way of torturing me. A little payback, if you will. What a smart cookie.