Like all three-year-old’s, my Olivia is committed to her playtime.

During a recent playdate, she and a little friend were jumping on our bed to music.  Olivia was selecting random CD’s and playing them (which she does herself) as a soundtrack to this high-adrenaline form of toddler sport.

It started with an age appropriate collection of kids songs like Wheels On The Bus, and If You’re Happy And You Know It.

Then she decided to explore Daddy’s collection…

The standard fare of Irish music and Bulgarian Pop Folk added a distinctly cultural feel to the festivities.  But when I heard the opening bars to Metallica’s Master of Puppets,  I immediately suggested it might not be the best choice because of how ‘loud’ it is, and because her friend wouldn’t like it (or be frightened by it, which I also figured was a possibility).

She shrugged, “Do you like it Willow?”

“Yeah!”  shouted her playmate.

And the two of them proceeded to bound enthusiastically to the crushing power chords and high-speed percussion of an epic thrash metal jam.

A mosh pit of three year olds had broken out in my bedroom.

So I did what any self-respecting metal-head parent would do…taught them how to salute the gods of rock by pressing their middle and ring fingers to their palms with their thumbs, while making devil horns of their index and pinky fingers.  Somewhere, Ozzy Ozbourne mumbled something to someone about being drunk on a bus – it was unintelligible, but you could tell he was happy.

A lot of fun can be found in unexpected places when you’re a kid.

As adults, we tend to forget that.  But all it takes is being open to it, and even a drab afternoon of renewing your driver’s license can be transmuted into some unexpected, story- worthy experience.

(Like the other evening, when I counseled a stranger on the streetcar who’d just caught his girlfriend cheating.  It’s all good…we trainers are honorary shrinks.)