Rob O’Hara, Guitar Hero

Mason had one of his friends spend the night last night. While I was driving them to 7-11 to buy some party snacks at 10 p.m. (because that’s what cool dads do), the boys had a discussion about whether they should learn to play guitar or the drums.

“Drums are louder, but guitars sound cooler,” said Mason’s friend.

I’ve been a guitar guy my whole life. When I was five or six years old, I used to practice my guitar skills by “playing” baseball bats and tennis rackets. When I was in second grade, Santa brought me my first guitar, a red, acoustic one that got more use as a prop in home videos than it did anywhere else.

That’s my buddy Andy on the “drums,” a set of brown pillows.

That red guitar made appearances in lots of home movies.

Decked out in sunglasses, a trucker hat, and a Chicago Bears vest, in this video I bang on the guitar for several minutes while shouting “look out, Mick Jagger!” for some unknown reason.

I actually did get a set of drums, when I was ten years old. I remember them being in my room for a little bit and then I remember them being in the garage for a little bit and then I remember them being gone. I don’t remember what happened to them but my daughter had this little electronic toy that never stopped making noise and one night while she was sleeping I took the batteries out of it and threw it into the garbage. I suspect my drums might have met a similar fate.

This is me in the mid-90s, still playing guitar and acting like a fool in front of the video camera…

…and here I am a year or two later, doing the same thing with Mr. Moonpie.

These days, my guitars spend more time hanging on the wall than they do hooked up to amplifiers. The world has enough bad versions of “Iron Man” out there without my contributions.