Dreams of drums

This just in: I love The Simpsons. In all my years of hurrying home for the post-work reruns, the show's cleverness has never ceased to amaze me. I'll construct conversations in my head where Smart Reid has to explain the meaning of the jokes to Dumb Reid, and then Dumb Reid goes "woah" over the depth of the humor.

But even after 15 seasons and thousands of hours spent watching every episode as many times as I could, it wasn't until last night's episode that I felt like I could actually relate to The Simpsons. Last night's episode found Bart in rare ADD form, being difficult and completely unable to focus, and to give their son an outlet, Marge and Homer bought Bart a drumset. I guess that for a lot of people, the concept of giving a distracted, troubled child a drumset to give their life focus seems hilarious in and of itself. But it seemed perfectly logical to me...

The year was 1986, back when we figured Madonna's time was about done and that the Beastie Boys had no future. Without ever having sat down at a drumset, I counted up the allowances that had accumulated due to my complete lack of a social life, went to The Drum Shop (it's actual name) and plunked down all my savings on a kit. When I got the black 5-piece Pearl kit home, I was so clueless that I didn't even know how to put the heads on or what the bass drum pedal was for. But I was having fun.

I asked questions of my drum-playing friends, subscribed to Modern Drummer magazine and watched a LOT of MTV, and slowly put 4/4 together, learning how to play along to Once Upon A Time and Reconciled. But the most important part was that it was the first time in my life that I'd had direction, a focus. I'd always been an incredibly difficult kid: distracted and easily upset. It wasn't until that noisy hobby arrived in my life that I could finally put my energy into something productive. I memorized drum product lines. I studied beat after beat, desperate to do the things that the guys on TV made look so easy.

I don't know if whichever writer of last night's episode of The Simpsons had the same experience, or if they thought that the concept of a kid gaining direction through drums was a hilarious concept, but whichever: it happened. True story. Swear!