Free Fathermucker by Greg Olear Page A

waterboarding.
    â€œMusic!” Roland orders, and I feel the staccato kicks of his feet on the back of my seat, like a massage chair eight settings too strong.
    â€œIs that how we ask? And stop kicking me.”
    â€œSorry,” he says—the correct rejoinder, but he inflects it as if he were telling me to fuck off. This is part of his complaint; for all his 800 Verbal vocabulary, he has difficulty with linguistic subtlety. He can come off rude, but the truth is that he doesn’t know any better. The easier-said-than-done trick is to not take it person-ally when he’s mean—he doesn’t intend to be rude; he legitimately can’t help himself. “Daddy, I have something important to tell you. Daddy . . . can we have music please Daddy,” he says, with emphases on the wrong syllables. Can we have music please Daddy . He often sounds like a bad actor, like Keanu Reeves in Point Break : I am an FBI agent .
    (I have Keanu on the brain this morning. I think it’s because there’s a picture of him in the STARS: THEY’RE JUST LIKE US! section of Us Weekly —disguised by a baseball cap and a full dark beard, he’s purchasing DVDs at a West Hollywood Best Buy—that I’ve been flipping past all week.)
    â€œYes,” I tell him. I turn on the stereo.
    â€œStates!” Roland cries.
    I know what he means, but I press him. It’s good for his development, to make him explicitly and politely ahem state his needs. “I don’t understand you.”
    â€œI . . . want . . . STATES!”
    â€œYou mean you want The States Mix ?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen say so.”
    â€œI . . . want . . . The . . . States . . . Mix. ”
    â€œPlease, Daddy.”
    This time he yells each word with equal emphasis: “ I . . . want . . . The . . . States . . . Mix . . . please . . . Daddy! ”
    Not perfect, but as good as I’ll get under the circumstances. We’re already late, and I don’t want him screaming his head off all the way to school.
    The States Mix , as the name suggests, is a compilation of songs in which one or more of the fifty states are prominently mentioned in the lyrics. It was harder to compile than you’d think—in pop music, cities tend to be referenced more often than states; California and New York are over-represented, and, owing to my HR background, I sought diversity (although I don’t think Roland cares); furthermore, some obvious choices—“Mississippi Queen,” “New York State of Mind,” “Carolina in My Mind”—flat-out suck. After some tweaking, here’s what I put together:
    1. “Sweet Home Alabama,” Lynyrd Skynyrd
    2. “School Days,” Kate and Mary McGarrigle
    3. “Hotel California,” Eagles
    4. “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” Charlie Daniels Band
    5. “If Heaven Ain’t a Lot Like Dixie,” Hank Williams, Jr.
    6. “Pigsknuckle, Arkansas,” Circle of Fists
    7. “Kentucky Woman,” Deep Purple
    8. “Long Vermont Roads,” Magnetic Fields
    9. “Portland, Oregon,” Loretta Lynn with Jack White
    10. “Rocky Mountain High,” John Denver
    11. “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” John Denver
    12. “America,” Simon & Garfunkel
    13. “Oklahoma,” 1998 London revival, featuring Hugh Jackman
    14. “California Girls,” The Beach Boys
    15. “West Texas Teardrops,” Old 97’s
    16. “Rock’n Me,” Steve Miller Band
    17. “Private Idaho,” The B-52s
    18. “Going to California,” Led Zeppelin
    19. “Theme From New York, New York ,” Frank Sinatra
    I’m starting to tire of many of the songs on the States Mix , especially the Steve Miller. But, while some might argue otherwise (and argue convincingly, if not incontrovertibly), three minutes of