Smackdown: Geneva Convention vs. Children's Music

I had the misfortune, as do many autistic children these days, of being born with heightened senses into a culture that values convenience over quality. In the case of food, it simply meant that I hardly ate anything during my childhood, but sound was my personal hell. When you have an exquisitely attuned ear, the modern world is horribly loud and grating for the most part, but the real torture is children's music. For reasons I have never been able to fathom, almost all children's music is major key, which in EQUAL TEMPERAMENT means that it is out of tune; then, just to elevate the torture of the sensitive ear, it is sung by a bunch of children who cannot carry a tune.

When we were kids, our mother found a kiddie record player at a garage sale. I loved the actual player, since I was fascinated by anything that rotated (OK, still am), but the records were the usual tripe with out-of-tune tots howling some simple major-key ditty. So I broke them. My brother, who is two years younger and not autistic (just dyslexic), didn't seem terribly sorry to see the records go either. (He is not as ridiculously enslaved to music as I am, but he is musical, and I have noticed that he also gravitates toward minor-key music, which is often the case with people who cannot stand equal temperament.) Of course, my mother didn't understand that, or why a child who so obviously loved music would pitch fits during Music Time at school and refuse to sit still during children's concerts. I sought solace in minor-key Vivaldi concertos. Then I grew up and discovered "period-style" music, and life was good. Now that I understand the evils of equal temperament, I would love to spare all the autistic children out there the years of torture I endured. For crying out loud, people, children's music is horrible stuff for anyone to have to endure, but for those of us with sensitive ears, it is the eighth circle of Dante's Inferno.

Famous Hat