I'm a pretty good singer, but clearly DD9 was, to put it mildly, unimpressed. Then we recently took a cruise, and DD and I were wandering the ship alone one evening when we stopped to listen to a performance of "When September Ends" with acoustic guitar. As we walked off, DD asked me what I thought of the singer, whose preferred style was clearly country, and his twanginess put me off a bit, so I said, "Not bad, but I could do that song better."

DD was outraged by that statement, which she clearly felt was unjustified by any evidence, and then I was mildly outraged by her outrage, because I sing all the time at home, and DO YOU EVEN KNOW ME ANYMORE? ;-)

In her defense, when I'm at the house and I randomly start singing, I'm in a goofing off mood. So if I'm not singing punk rock (which has awful vocals) or hair metal (she doesn't care for the style), I'll take a song with perfectly good vocals and mess it up. Like, if "Let It Go" is stuck in my head, I might start doing it in the style of bad opera, or say to myself, "Let's see what it sounds like if Elsa is a bass."

The outrage on both sides continued into the next night when we went to the karaoke lounge, and DD had to begrudgingly concede that I had some ability in that area... and although she still wasn't impressed with one of my selections, she did take note of the fact that other people clearly were. Her lack of appreciation of the range and beauty of Axl Rose shows that, even halfway to her adulthood, I have a lot more parenting to do.

Along those lines, I'd often wondered how DD's talent would present itself, given that I'm quite good, and DW is quite tone deaf. DD has developed slowly in this area, with a lot of off-tune singing mixed in with flashes of good quality, and so much embellishment of style throwing her off that you had to wonder whether she had an ear for it at all, or was just getting too "creative." So, even though it's a rather ordinary accomplishment, I'm rather pleased to note DD was selected to join the school choir next year.