Praise God

Grant has never slept in. It never mattered what time he went to bed—he was always up at first light, usually around six am. We’d hear his feet hit the ground, the patter of his sprint, then feel the collision as he jumped on me and exclaimed, “Hi, Dad!”

This weekend, we traveled to Poughkeepsie to watch Grant and Bucknell wrap up their season against Marist. We stayed five minutes from the stadium, which meant we could sleep in.

Just after seven am, I felt my AppleWatch pulse with a message. I ignored it. Two minutes later, Lauren’s phone dinged. Grant was awake and hence per usual so were we. He and I bantered a bit about the game and college football overall. Then I got this text from him:

This exchange followed:

He’s referring to Meek Mill’s “Dreams and Nightmares,” which is a staggering composition that merges styles and complex rhythms and lyrics. But to Grant, “I Gotta Poop” is better.

Don’t look up Big E Dude. His top work includes, “Fat Guys Like Food,” “Monkeys Fling Poo,” “The Spork Song,” and other similar prepubescent boy hits.

Grant has been afflicting me with such choices since he was small. There was “Tootin Bath Tub Baby Cousins,” the Big E Dude catalog, “Excuse My Christmas,” and many others. I can identify any of these in two notes, and I always start yelling.

This is hardly the only musical combat being waged against me this weekend. For some of our ride last night, we listened to Christmas music. This morning, Lauren sent me this screenshot of Graham’s Snap story.

Dear readers, Graham has not read the Christmas creep story—he’s just not backing down. On some of the playlists, Louis Armstrong comes on with “Christmas in New Orleans.” Graham plays trumpet in the high school band—I use plays loosely. He does not intend to go beyond his freshman year with music but has nevertheless described Armstrong as “mid” and proclaimed that he himself could do anything Armstrong does.

I have told Graham that Armstrong is a genius, and he always comes back with, “Not on Kanye’s level.”

“Graham, there is no Kanye without Louis Armstrong. He’s the most important American artist of the twentieth century. Even Kanye would say that.”

“Louis couldn’t make ‘Praise God.’”

“‘Praise God’ straight up references Armstrong.”

“Has he ever sampled Will Ferrell? No? Didn’t think so.”

That’s your shutdown argument there, folks.