Hard Rock?

When I was about eighteen years old and about to move away to college, my dad decided to do one last big vacation with myself and the rest of the family. We went to Florida along with several other states in the southeastern U.S. As part of that trip, we wound up at the Hard Rock Café in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. My mom was not down with the atmosphere of the Hard Rock at the time. Sitting in a big room with bands like Everclear, Green Day, The Toadies, and Soundgarden blaring at a very loud level was the last thing she wanted to do. I was right at the age where I couldn't imagine anything better than doing that, and I just couldn't understand that joyless state that my mom found herself in. I laughed a great deal when I saw that she had taken her napkin, wadded it up into two little balls, and used it to plug her ears with so that she could withstand the atmosphere of the place.

Now, twenty-five years later, my own son is about eighteen years old and about to move away to college. I've gone on several mini-vacations with him over the last few months. They've been short weekend jaunts, but I'm doing the same thing that my dad did, trying to make some last few memories with my son while I still can.

On one of these trips this past weekend, my son decided that we should have lunch at the nearby Hard Rock Café. It's funny, because I haven't been there since that day years ago. Here's a picture of me with Roy Orbison's guitar.

Sitting at the table, the atmosphere was similar to what it was twenty-five years ago. Music was blaring at top volume. However, Everclear, Green Day, and Soundgarden were nowhere to be found. Not even The Toadies made an appearance. I wanted to point out to the waitress that brought us our overpriced burgers that they needed to change the name of this place, because there was no hard rock or hell, even soft rock, going on here. Instead, we suffered through dance songs with repetitive thumping beats that used to be reserved for remixes of pop music songs that only played in dance clubs where people were dancing and wanted a beat to dance to. Stuff like the Rihanna song that made me look around for the waitress so that I could say, "Check please!"

Here we were, all these years later, and the circle was complete. I was my mom, wanting to stuff the wadded up napkins in my ears to save myself the discomfort of suffering through the popular music of the kids these days. The best thing about it all is that I at least did my job as a parent, because my son didn't like the stuff like that Rihanna song that they played anymore than I did. So, at least I did my job there.