THIS MORNING I WENT TO THE GYM, WHICH MEANS THAT
sometime after I put on my running tights but before I actually
broke a sweat I texted my 19-year-old son the following
message: “At gym need music till 10.”
Because the sun had been up for only three hours, it’s quite
possible my college-student son was still sleeping. But I didn’t
want to take any chances. You see, until you experience it,
you can’t really understand the unique, hair-on-fire fury you
feel when you are a middle-aged woman who has turned the
treadmill up to 6.8, meaning you are basically sprinting, but
you’re listening to Stevie Wonder and feeling really good
about your muscle mass, stamina and life in general when—
blip!—suddenly the music stops and your iPhone screen says,
cheerily, “Looks like you’re listening on another device.” And
then, for just an instant, you feel like you could murder one of
your children.
Why does my music stop when my son’s starts? If I could
tell you that, I might be able to correct the problem. Even
my smarty-pants digital-native progeny can’t quite get to the
bottom of it. It has something to do with the cloud and my
account and the fact that the children would rather tolerate
Cat Stevens’ entireTea for the Tillerman on their phones than
pay for Apple Music themselves. My husband, sneakily, is not
on the cloud I inhabit with the children. Imagine.IT USED TO BEthat I didn’t take the step of informing my
son when I wanted to listen to music, but that got dangerous
the time I was driving on a steep, winding road, headed to an
unfamiliar destination, listening to Todd Rundgren and Waze
simultaneously, when my son put on his headphones and
walked to class. Thus ensued a battle to the musical death, as it
were, with me stabbing the Play button on the dashboard every
three seconds as he repeatedly stabbed the Play button on his
phone. When I wouldn’t relent, he started texting me, asking
me to surrender. And I couldn’t answer the texts because I was
driving and not a complete idiot.
So I let him win that battle, but I won the war. I pulled rank:
now, when we fight for music, Mom always gets to win.
Remember the old AT&T commercials imploring us to
“reach out and touch someone”? Thanks to Apple Music
and the cloud, my two older sons and I are touching each
other all the time. Which is a good thing, right? The iPhone
recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, and in just a decade
it has made many things we do much easier—including
parenting. But because so much of our kids’ lives are now
happening on screens small enough to fit in a back pocket,they naturally have become so much more clever in
the game of hide-and-seek with Mom and Dad. What
happens on the phone stays on the phone, far from
prying parental eyes. And so when I discovered I had
access to my sons’ music, I felt like a spy who had
successfully infiltrated an enemy camp. The music
they downloaded told me something about them, and
revealed how different they are from each other.BUT AS MY BOYS LEARNEDin nursery school, there
are good touches and bad touches. Now that the
novelty has worn off and my children keep chewing
through my iPhone storage with music I don’t want,
we are entering bad-touch territory. Thanks to our
connection, I have entire albums of music on my
phone from artists I find depressing (Lana Del Rey)
or ridiculous (Mariah Carey), or found unappealing
the first time around (Abba). These are overwhelmed
by the countless artists I’ve never heard of (A Boogie
Wit Da Hoodie, anyone?). I’m not sure Apple is
improving my life by making me feel so old and
uncool. And we won’t get into the fact that, among
the unfamiliar artists, many of them have lyrics so
misogynistic that it makes me, the mother of three
boys, put my head in my hands and wonder where I
have gone wrong.
When I ask my sons why our music is linked and
how we might fix it, I half-expect to find myself part
of a BuzzFeed list: “10 Incredibly Clueless Texts From
Moms: Which One Is Yours?” They are strangely
unhelpful with this issue. I suppose it’s that, because
I am paying the bill, they have little incentive to
disconnect. Besides, I’m sure they have removed all of
the John Prine I’ve downloaded by now. Pity.Van Ogtrop is the author ofJust Let Me Lie Down:
Necessary Terms for the Half-Insane Working MomHey! You! Get off of my cloud!
And other tales from the
family-data-sharing economy
By Kristin van OgtropEssayThe Amateur
ILLUSTRATION BY LUCI GUTIÉRREZ FOR TIME