I own this weird little hand drum. It’s a few feet long and fairly skinny. I think it’s some type of African drum. But more likely, it’s a drum that looks like an African drum but is really just hunks of wood slapped together and painted with “tribal” art in some other country to be shipped to a State Street shop down in Madison that also sells dashikis and Bob Marley desktop calendars and blown glass tobacco pipes for smoking your perfectly legal and uncontroversial tobacco. I got it years ago as a (very thoughtful) gift (that I am very thankful for to this very day). In the end, the question of whether it’s an authentic drum of impressively cultural origin or an overpriced tchotchke is irrelevant. I’ve had a lot of fun with it over the years, cranking out one mind-blowing hand drum solo after another, mostly during private (and romantic) performances for my wife.

And now, my kids just love the thing.

The drum has a little shoulder strap so you can easily hold it like a football under one arm while tapping wailing on it with your hands. So my four year old daughter can often be seen wandering around the house, drumming and singing epically long songs about kitties, kitty princesses, kitty mermaids, kitty fairies, puppies that are actually kitties, and ducks. My 1 year-old stands it on the floor and plays it like a big bongo. Naked. Just like his daddy used to back in college. Not really. As far as I can remember.

My living room is actually home to a growing collection of lilliputian musical instruments, from a little tambourine to a tiny triangle to a wee pair of cymbals. Seriously, I have maracas coming out my djembe over here. Thus far, an orange plastic harmonica is the only non-percussive instrument in the house.

I really hope my kids take some sort of interest in playing a musical instrument (a real one, not the recorder or the washboard or the didgeridoo). I’d be so proud to see them up on a stage playing music, even if it was just something simple like, say, leading a 32-piece rock orchestra in a rousing rendition of Sir Steve Miller’s immortal classic Take the Money and Run, which was tearfully dedicated to me.

    Short of that, I’ll be happy if they just keep messing around with clackers and wood blocks and kazoos and such. Seeing the giant smile that breaks out on my son’s face after a satisfying drum stick THWACK is just ... awesome. And it’s really cool to see him imitate his sister and play the instruments they way she does – as best he can. We only have one harmonica, so while my daughter blazes through her own Blues Traveler-style mouth harp solo, he’s usually trying his darnedest to puff into the remote control to our DVD player.

A Chippewa Valley musician once told me a story about drumming out beats right on her belly while she was pregnant with her son. Having played drums all through high school and into college, I always thought this was a really cool idea – infuse the kid’s very soul with some rhythm, man! But something tells me my wife wouldn’t have appreciated it quite as much back when she was preggers. She doesn’t even like it when I drum my fingers on the kitchen table for hours on end (no matter how freakin’ sweet it might sound). I suppose I could have recorded some drum riffs and gotten a pair of headphones large enough to span her stomach, but that would have required a bunch of, you know, work. So, instead, I just hired a guy to beatbox into her bellybutton. Not really. As far as I can remember.

At any rate, the tiniest of the Paulus’s are running around with musical instruments, and that’s gotta be good for them – probably in a whole bunch of ways that my wife has already researched and explained to me in sharp detail. It’s good to see them having fun with sounds and motion and all that.

And if I can get my son to stop thwonking me on the head with the little metal triangle beater thing, life will simply rock.