the kid has a voice

seven came home with an inflatable electric guitar the other day. (don't ask why.) not a real guitar. not a toy guitar. an inflatable guitar, with painted-on strings and frets and tuning pegs. ok, so now there was a four-foot inflatable guitar in the house. it couldn't make any sounds. it couldn't break down. so how much damage could it possibly cause? and then something very odd happened. yesterday when i arrived home from our softball match, seven greeted me at the door, guitar in hand, with a song. not a miley cyrus song or a selena gomez song or a demi lovato song. a song i've never heard before. and when i asked her to tell me who the song belonged to, she replied, "me." huh? what do you mean, you? "i wrote the song, daddy." huh? what do you mean, you wrote the song? "i wrote the song. it's my song. wait... i'll show you." at that point, seven scurried off into her bedroom only to return a few seconds later with a sheet of lined paper in her hand. "you see. i wrote the song." she handed me the sheet of paper. on it were written words - lyrics - and the occasional musical note which she had learned to draw in music class. there was even a title. "sparks fly." not a bad title. i asked her to sing the song again. she obliged, only this time with more enthusiasm. strumming along, she delivered a mostly workmanlike performance. alright, so there wasn't really any chorus to speak of. just two verses followed by a lot of moaning. but the fact that she had actually written out the lyrics to the number was rather impressive. and her singing voice was getting better, too. and the funny thing is that i've never encouraged her to sit down and write a song or a poem or a novel or any sort of composition for that matter. in fact, i had no idea she enjoyed songwriting in the first place. instead, i spent the last five years trying to convince her to embrace baseball or soccer or tennis or ping pong or golf. and all to no avail. but apparently she loves to write songs. "sparks fly." who knew?

her favorite vid at the moment, for obvious reasons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-3vPxKdj6o