Guitar Heroes

It was a warm September evening, and my husband and I were finishing up our first set of early Beatles tunes. We'd missed some notes here and there, but overall, the drums and the guitar sounded great. Even the vocals felt good.

As soon as the final note rang out, we received our first standing ovation. Barely balanced on his feet, our 15-month-old son clapped furiously while his eyes showered us with absolute adoration. "My parents," those eyes said, "are the coolest people on the planet. They can play music!"

My Catholic guilt roiled as the digitally-rendered faces of the Fab Four froze on the television screen.

"It's not real," I said, removing the plastic replica of Paul McCartney's Hofner bass guitar from around my neck and clacking the color-coded buttons with my fingers. "See?"

Of course, he didn't. The fact that his parents were playing "Beatles RockBand" for the Nintendo Wii held no meaning for him. As far as he was concerned, we were the Beatles.

That night, we played song after song—our son clapping jubilantly after each. I recognized the look of wonder on his face. It is the same one I give my own mother when she plays her real guitar—you know, the kind made out of wood with six nylon strings? From the moment my mother strummed the first few bars of "Edelweiss" for me when I was six years old, I knew I wanted to play the guitar, too. But as childhood plans often go, mine was sidelined when I was distracted by other things, like the piano (I loved it but never practiced).

In my last semester of college, I finally took a guitar class for beginners using my mom's first and only guitar. It was fun, but the week after the class ended, the bridge of the 30-year-old instrument spontaneously busted—which seemed like an omen to me. After all, in my mother's hands, the guitar is an articulate conversationalist—in mine, a grunting caveman with a frog in its throat.

However, as I clacked my way through "Twist and Shout" last September, I vowed to get a real instrument into the house so that our son would no longer be dazzled by pretty fakes. In the meantime, we set him up on the RockBand drums. With a drum stick in each hand, he sat on his daddy's lap as they tapped out the rhythm to "Yellow Submarine" on the corresponding colored dots. For now, at least, he can "play music," too.