Cannot leave his digger

Nature or nurture? If I play heavy-metal music frequently and loudly, should not my 3 year-old come to love heavy metal? If nurture were the dominant determinant of behaviour in his life, then undoubtedly it would. I have video evidence confirming to what lengths I have gone to cultivate an appreciation for growling vocals, speed pedal work, and thrashing guitar riffs. I have introduced him to Arch Enemy, In Flames, Killswitch Engage and Amon Armath and All That Remains. After a 9 month strict diet of metal one might expect synapses to have formed, and subsequently the serotonin to flow in grand quantities whenever he hears metal. Rather, though, he has a particular affinity for Johnny Cash and The Almanac Singers. Johnny Cash was dead before Boober was born, and The Almanac Singers had disbanded before even my father was born.

No explanation is required for how I came to listen to Johnny Cash's music. He was impossible to avoid as I was growing up, and yet I did, because my musical interests were greatly influenced by my cousins who listened to heavy metal. Before that, however, I had already come to appreciate and love as diverse music as Survivor, Gordon Lightfoot, classical music, and The Smurfs - I was young. How I came to be acquainted with The Almanac Singers is a story now buried in the haze of time. It was no doubt accidental, and most likely involved stealing music from over the Internet - no one lost royalties that I am aware of.

I still love listening to both in equal measure as with heavy metal music. Rowan, despite all my efforts to indoctrinate him when he was young and vulnerable, has decided he hates heavy metal, and loves Johnny Cash and The Almanac Singers. Well, he loves Ring of Fire and When The Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash, and he loves The Strange Death of John Doe and Billy Boy (which he calls "Charming Billy") from The Almanac Singers.

I'm not writing this to tell you about his predilection for guitar and vocal centred music, but to sing the praises of his imagination. One line from Billy Boy goes, "He's a young boy / And cannot leave his mother" which Rowan has decided is more appropriately sung as, "He's a young boy / And cannot leave his digger". His "digger"? The child's fixation on construction vehicles and toys so infects his every thought that he graps the humour and apropos exchange of the word "digger" for "mother". He cracks me up daily ... he causes me to snap daily, but that's an entirely other series of long and whiny posts.

Anyway, it's nature, because his mother loves guitar and vocal centred music.