Power is when your kids want your earbuds

My 20-year-old son has a litany of reasons why I should trade him the superior, $200 earbuds that came free with my laptop that I admittedly have only used once to listen to a podcast on feng shui.

“You’re not using them.”

“You can have my (lesser) earbuds in case you ever need them.”

“You probably won’t notice the difference in quality.”

Uh.

He has apparently forgotten I was once the disco queen of Baton Rouge, La.

I was funking out to Sly before he was a proton. I knew Fleetwood Mac when they were the Bluesbreakers, saw Edgar Winter when I was 16, couldn’t get enough of Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young before my frontal cortex was conjoined with my brain.

“But you don’t listen to music now the way I listen to music,” he says. “Which would be how?” I say. “All the time,” he says.

I’ll give him that, as today’s music scene spits out new bands like I used to spit out Mama’s lima beans when she wasn’t looking.

My son’s is a vast repertoire that, to our credit, I am interested in learning more about, and he is interested in sharing.

“Wanna hear a new song?” says he when we are making dinner together.

I do like his taste in music, kind of Joni Mitchell mixed with Mumford and Sons meets Daft Punk.

See. I know the names. “Sure!” I say.

And then who is that.

I mean who IS that? “Portugal. The Man.”

“And then?” I ask about the next one. “Alt J.”

“And?”

“King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.”

“That’s the name of the band?” I say, at which point my head is spinning like David Byrne’s in that one video, and I am longing for the days when we were on the same bandwidth, all us Hooks in the same predictable LP groove, starting with “Happy Birthday” and moving into “I’m a Little Teapot” and “Twinkle, Twinkle,” not to mention Mozart in utero.

At Christmas time, we’d lie under the tree and listen to “Silent Night, Holy Night” and sing all the parts to “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” We developed certain favorite songs, “Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie” and “The City of New Orleans,” which we could belt out, word-for-word while raking leaves. We had a favorite playlist for especially long road trips and threw Motown dance parties in the living room. We all went to see Jimmy Buffett one year, which ended up being a mistake for Grated children who were still watching “Arthur,” as coconut shells don’t always cover breasts.

We even now, still, share common musical ground. A recent road trip to see family in Memphis had us headbanging to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and cranking “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum. My elder son, a former tenor in his college choir, will get down with me and Karen Carpenter on demand.

But then here comes the “Wanna hear a new song?” while we’re making dinner in the quiet silence of my mind. I like silence sometimes, you see, unlike 20-somethings trying to keep up with Spotify’s “Discover Weekly.”

And soon enough we are listening to a whole CD of new songs, which leads the way into a new earbuds diatribe.

“You know, Mom, you only used them that one time. What if you never use them again?”

There comes a time in every mother’s life.

“I have given you everything you need,” I said during our last earbuds check-in. “Help with homework. Rides to soccer. Fluid from my amniotic sac. If there’s one thing I am going to deny you, it’s those earbuds. They belong to me.”

A mother has a right to own something and keep it for herself whether she uses it or not.

For once, I have technology my kids want.