What did you want for your 10th birthday? I imagine I was hoping for a new My Little Pony to add to my collection, or maybe that was the year I got my Gameboy, or that awesome blue push-scooter I’d been begging for. It had a hand-break and everything, which was necessary to stop the force of this monstrous machine barrelling down the block at warp speed. Just like the hairstyles of the time, scooters were made to be extra large back then, not like the little razor scooters everyone is zipping around on today, assuming those are still a thing. It’s so hard to keep up.
But, I digress.
While my 10th birthday is long gone, my son’s is coming up this weekend, and as much as I expected him to ask for a new video game, or the toy monster trucks that are all the rage in our house again after taking a brief four-year hiatus, the boy insists on keeping Mama on her toes. No toys. No games. No scooter. To celebrate his foray into double-digit-dom, he wants a bass guitar.
Easy peasy, right? Wrong! My son is nothing if not specific, which is why it doesn’t surprise me that he isn’t asking for just any old bass guitar. He’s asking for a Hofner violin bass guitar. You know, the Beatles bass. The one Paul McCartney plays. The one I told Logan about while chatting in the kitchen at work the other day, and it made his eyes go all dreamy as he whispered, “I’ve never seen one in person.” That’s the only bass guitar that will do, so that’s the one my son will have. Eventually.
The age of 10 years old seems a good age to learn some life lessons, like the value of a dollar and how hard work pays off. We’ve been teaching these ideas for awhile now, so he wasn’t totally shocked when we said our boy would have to earn every dollar if he wanted to get that super extra special, dreamy-eye-inducing guitar. Suddenly, our recycling is getting done without a fuss, the weeds are getting pulled with only minor flower casualties, the floor is vacuumed, the cats are fed and watered, and little by little he’s getting closer to his goal.
Will he have it in time for his birthday this weekend? Probably not. But, as the Beatles would say, he’ll get by with a little help from his friends, trading in the usual stack of mystery gifts with a simple request for a 5-Buck Birthday Party to help him round out his savings and get that beautiful Hofner violin bass guitar.
Now that’s how you crank it to 10! We’ll talk about taking it to 11 next year.
Chrissy Cruickshank is a creative writer at 105.3 Rock & 102.1 CJCY.
