An Important Lesson About Place

We All Have Our Own Comfort Zones

“Daddy, it kind of smells bad in here,” she says. I look down at her and she’s scrunching her nose and I realize I made a mistake.

I messed up because I took her to a place that was really a place for me. I assumed, wrongly, it would be a place for her as well. Lesson learned.

When I was a teenager and even into my twenties, there were two local shops where I basically lived. One was a comic book shop called Collector’s Emporium. The other was a record shop called Vinyl Outlet.

They were places where I felt I could be, well, me. I didn’t even have to buy anything. I knew the proprietors. I knew other music fans that went there. My guards could be down at those places.

And Vinyl Outlet… well, it smelled exactly like the place Little Bean and I walked into over the weekend, the magnificent Village Music in Pembroke NH. The owner works another job so the music store doesn’t have set hours. It’s more like a pop up. I heard they were going to be open this past weekend and I was so excited to go because I knew - I just was certain - that Little Bean would feel the same sense of place that I always do in shops like this.

But she did not.

“There’s not really anything I know here,” she said, standing amid the Led Zeppelin and KISS and The Who and Bruce Springsteen stinky, wonderful albums. Of course she didn’t. What was I thinking?

She’s a rock and roll kid, to be sure, and find a wide open, clean store that’s piping The Warning over the loudspeakers while she gets to slap on some headphones and play her piano and we’d have something.

A dusty record shop packed to the ceiling with cassette tapes of Bad Company and Boston? Well…

She perked up a little when we browsed through the selection of Beatles albums and she asked if they had any AC/DC albums, but they didn’t.

But I switched gears quickly. It’s ok. She consumes music differently than I did at her age. This wasn’t her place. That smell to me was like being in a chocolate factory. To her, just dust.

So, two lessons on the path forward. First, it may be time for some ‘new’ old music for her. I’m certain, given her tastes, that she’d dig Heart and Pink Floyd and Judas Priest. She used to love The Cure as a toddler. It’s time to start spinning some vinyl at home.

But the more important lesson is that it’s also time for me to begin coming toward HER, toward her tastes. She knows music, she’s familiar with what I like and we like plenty of things together. But now it’s time for me to become the student and let her take me places. Let’s see how that works out.

And in the meantime, don’t let the stinkiness keep you away. Village Music is an amazing place, packed to the ceiling with music, books, t-shirts, DVDS and all sorts of cool things. They don’t really have a website but here’s a link to their Facebook page. Just be aware their hours are irregular: Village Music Pembroke