Author's Note: This is an earlier review request. I plan to do the newer ones too of course, but I wanted to do something silly and ridiculous. So that's how this came about. Sorry for anyone I offend. Personally I also have a weakness for many a pop song, and did listen to the one I used when I was in High School myself. Embrace the guilty pleasures XD. Enjoy!
An Embarrassment
It was the summer before 7th grade when one day Aunt Mia came over with two big boxes. One of them she made Vince carry out of the car for her. Uncle Brian was at the shop with her Mom and Dad, as usual. She'd been enjoying her free time home alone, stereo blasting rap music that she hastily turned down when she saw her Aunt's car pulling into the driveway. Vince kicked open the back door, muscling one old cardboard box inside. He set it heavily on the kitchen floor with a thunk, then moved to the fridge to pull out a bottle of blue sports drink. Her favorite.
She scowled at him. "Well hello to you too. Please come in, make yourself at home." She couldn't keep the sarcasm out of her voice, too much snarky teenager already in her 12 year old bones.
"I always do," he returned, shit-eating grin on his face as he took a long drink.
"What the hell is that?" she asked, kicking the toe of her bare foot lightly against the distressed cardboard of the box.
"Language," Aunt Mia scolded as she shouldered through the doorway with another box.
"Aw, c'mon Aunt Mi…" she complained. "It's just Hell. Mami doesn't care if I say it."
"Your mother is a heathen with no manners," her aunt replied, laughing. "I only hope I can hammer a few of them into you when I come around." She dropped her box onto the floor beside the other, letting out a sigh. "And these, are for you."
Raising a brow, the pre-teen opened up the top flaps of the box slowly, and peered inside. There were rows of skinny plastic cases with names and titles on them. She tilted her head slightly. "What is this? Bootlegged movies?"
"What?" Her aunt looked outraged and then laughed. "No! They're CDs!"
"What?" she repeated, looking at her blankly.
"Music," Aunt Mia replied, an exasperated look on her face. "You know, before everything was downloaded off the internet and stored in your damn mp3 players and cell phones?"
"No…?" the girl shook her head, blinking.
"Geez, I feel old."
"That's because you are old, Mom," Vince put in from where he was lounging at the table. Mia shot him a scolding look and he smiled, looking apologetic.
"I'm only old to 15 year old little boys," she replied, nose in the air. Then she turned back to her niece. "Look, I get it, CDs make me totally ancient, but you can take all this music and download it onto your computer and add it to your music collection."
"Has Dad been complaining about my choices in music at the garage?" she asked, pulling out a CD with a strange woman on the front. She had pink hair in pigtails. She did not think this was going to be her kind of music.
"No," Mia lied smoothly. "It's only that some of that has a lot of language that's not really appropriate for a girl your age."
"Now you really sound old, Aunt Mia."
"Don't be a brat. Worst case scenario you just junk the CDs anyway. Who knows, maybe you'll find something in all this that appeals to you."
The girl looked dubious as she lifted out a case decorated with some sort of girl group across the front, all wearing different shades of silvery skimpy dresses. "I fail to see how this is more appropriate," she said drily.
Still, she shrugged and went upstairs to get her laptop and attachable disc drive. It couldn't hurt.
0000
Later that evening when Dom and Letty pulled up to the house they heard the faint sounds of music drifting out the open window and exchanged a glance. Letty stepped out of the car, expecting to hear the profanity-laced lyrics of something their dear daughter had found online. Not that she really wanted to forbid her daughter from listening to the kind of music she liked. But then there were the complications of her exposing her friends and classmates to said music, and other parents, and teachers talking to her about her daughter's language.
Dom had suggested that intervention by Mia might work best.
But she really hadn't been expecting this result. Exchanging a wary look with Dom she approached the back door and slowly opened it.
The music drifting out was vaguely familiar. In the way that it made Letty remember clapping her hands over her ears and diving over Mia to get control of the radio station. Or the way that Dom remembered it blasting from his teenage sister's room to his eternal suffering, until he fled the house or blasted his own music in competition.
Letty cautiously made her way through the kitchen, where the boxes Mia had brought over earlier were piled full of CDs in a haphazard manner, other cases scattered across the table. She lifted the offending one by the corner with the tips of her fingers and raised a brow at Dom.
"Your daughter is listening to Britney Spears," she told him accusingly and he held up his hands.
"Why is that my fault!?"
"It's your sister!"
"Maybe she's just playing this to fuck with us," Dom suggested hopefully and they walked into the living room together.
Instead they found their 12 year old daughter, feet bare, red shorts on, blue and red Superman shirt, her curly black hair pulled into pigtails as she sang along to 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' into the television remote.
Letty punched her husband in the arm. "This is totally your fault!" she hissed and he scowled at her as he rubbed his arm.
He was going to kill Mia, he thought as he watched his daughter shake her hips to the pop song. This was not any better than the music she'd been listening to before. In fact he thought it was worse! Because it seemed a hell of a lot more sexual. In the middle of fuming over the scolding he was going to give his sister he almost didn't notice when the young girl dancing with abandon on the couch turned around to see her parents staring at her.
The remote clattered out of her hands and she turned red, nearly falling off the couch. Letty walked past her to turn off the stereo.
"Uh… hi Mami. Hi Papi," she said weakly.
"We're never speaking of this again," Letty replied and walked upstairs, leaving father and daughter staring at one another in silent embarrassment.
Yeah, that was probably the best way to deal with it, he agreed, turning to go back into the kitchen. That and purging her music collection.