Rock Until 8

I come from a fairly musical family. Dad started playing guitar at 16. When he was 37, his 13 year old (me) took up guitar, while his 9 year old started drumming. I think Dave's drumset joined the family that same year.

We were pretty hard rocking, playing classic rock tunes from dad's arsenal. I'm not saying our little townhouse basement shook like Thunder, but my brother was raised to be a combo of Keith Moon and Ginger Baker! So nearly every night after dinner, we raced downstairs to jam together. For years!! Oh, but there was one rule, laid down by our hard rocking (but non instrumental) mom: gotta stop at 8.

Now, it's not that mom doesn't like loud music. She and dad still hit concerts a lot - losing that was probably the hardest part of quarantine for them. And it's not that our townhouse basement walls were thin. It was that we lived in a connected house, with neighbors on two sides, and we were loud. My parents wanted to raise their sons to be respectful to others.

Back then, dinner was usually around 5:30. And it made me think, last night, as I was pan frying Pierogi and onions, as a quicker dinner, when we were eating at an earlier time (about 6:15pm) - how much time would we have had to play music in this day and age? I'm not usually making something that takes 10 minutes, after all. So, has the busy nature of life made it so we'd barely have had time to make music? Would my parents have had to say, "eh, it's not our fault those little kids have to be in bed" (they'd never do that). Just an interesting thought about dinner time when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s vs today's schedules.