Hands down, I’m the beatbox champion of the Learn Houston household. We haven’t had a showdown or anything (yet), but I find that the sputtery skills I cultivated as a boy serve me well in adulthood. Sometimes, you see, there is simply nothing that will make Lennie happy but being beatboxed to. Strange but true. At times, no amount of belly-getting, silly-song-singing, cooing, or airplaning will quiet her down. When all of these things have failed, we know there’s nothing left to do but to beatbox. M has to do this pretty frequently in the car, when she’s riding in the back with an upset Lennie whose belly is inaccessible, who can’t be airplaned at the moment, and who isn’t responding to any vocal pacifiers.

M’s beatboxing, for all the good it actually does for Lennie (it often quiets her down), is all frontal and thus lacks depth. That is, she fills her mouth with air and spits out roughly uniform little splats of air until she runs out. Having made somewhat of a study of beatboxing as an adolescent, I happen to know that better technique is required of a beatbox master. True and proper beatboxing requires frequent inhalation of air, some use of the vocal chords, and strict attention to rhythm, lip position and firmness, and modulation of airflow. And while I am by no means a beatbox master, I believe I have a more polished beatbox presentation than M.

Sadly, I also have stage fright and so have performed only private shows for Lennie. These few shows have been my first beatbox performances in easily 15 years, and so it stands to reason that I’d be a little rusty. But my little family shouldn’t be too surprised if, one day, I come home from work a free man, having quit my job to don multifarious gold chains and dental prosthetics, a puffy jacket, and a hip-hop toboggan to fulfill my calling as a human beatbox.

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