Hero Family

Please enjoy this posting while The Hossman Family takes a slight break to enjoy a week of work-related travel.

I broke down and bought Guitar Hero for my Xbox 360.

Let’s recap my realm of dorkness: I am a Trekkie, I used to collect comic books, I played Dungeons and Dragons and I am a fanatic of fantasy football. Now let’s go ahead and add to it Guitar Hero: a plastic and fake guitar in my hands rocking out with my two dogs as my groupies.

Hossmom judged me. She judged me hard.

I didn’t care, I needed something that I could play to without connecting to the internet and what better way than to live out my fantasies of rock stardom. I asked Hossmom to take off her panties and throw them at me. Nada. I tried to get the cats to dance on stripper poles and in cages. Denied. I tried to get Little Hoss to rock out.

And she did.

Kids are demanding. I personally think that my kids are pretty much some of the best behaved kids that I have ever seen. That doesn’t mean that they don’t get to me to the point that I want to stick my head in the blinder.

Daddy I want this, Daddy I want that, Daddy why don’t you buy me more toys that I see and then will not like as soon as we get home. Sometimes, my two kids just drive me fucking insane.

But then the amazing happens and everything is forgiven. Something truly wonderful is given to me by my kids and I swear I have cried when it’s happened. I’m man enough to admit it.

And this was one of those times.

Little Hoss had never seen Guitar Hero before or me play it as I just got it. After Hossmom’s refusal to throw her undergarments at me, I thought that I would just have to forgo the rest of the fantasy.

But Little Hoss walked in, looked at the screen and I swear to you she said “Daddy, Rock Out?”

I was shocked, so I said “What baby?”

“Daddy, Little Hoss Rock!”

She then came and set on my lap. This moment was magical, I was acting on pure instinct. I took the fake guitar strap off my shoulders and draped it over Little Hoss. She snuggled in and gave me her hand. I took it, still not sure what was going to happen.

I plugged in a song—Welcome to the Jungle.

Could this be more perfect? Was this really going to happen? Was I going to forgo any and all father’s days presents for this one? You bet your ass I was.

The song started and I took Little Hoss’s hand. The riffs started coming and we got ready.

I started counting down for her and she joined in. “1, 2, 3!”

And then we strummed the fake guitar.

Her laughter was infectious. We wailed on that little fake Gibson. It was smoking as we both were laughing and rocking out to some classic G n’ R. I worked the fake frets and she worked the body, adding to each note her own laughter and her father’s admiration.

Again and again we played the different songs. We started throwing in moves. She started bobbing her head up and down and grunting. I started tilting the guitar back and throwing out some Gene Simmons tongue action. We had our first jam section and it was everything you would think it would be. She was on my lap, letting me hold her hand so she knew when to strum and me loving every minute of it.

Eventually she got tired of the rock and roll lifestyle and retreated. I thought that it was over. The dream was over and you can only ask for so much in a miracle. It was done. But it wasn’t, she had one more present for Hossdad.

“Daddy, get Bubba Hoss” she said.

Now, we were a band.

With Bubba Hoss working the strumming with his 6 month old fingers and Little Hoss saying “Rock! Rock! Rock! Rock!”, I have never been so proud of my kids. Both of them on my lap, rocking out to grunge, living a dream. We weren’t pretty, we butchered most of the songs but cut us a break, she’s only two.

I put the kids down for a nap and came back into the living room.

Hossmom picked up the fake guitar. Sat back in the chair and put on a little Poison. I haven’t seen Hossman play a video game in 10 years, but there she was, asking me how to play.

If the Partridge family did heavy metal, that’s who we would be.

Only someone would be throwing some panties at me during my solos.