I think it’s fair to say that I, more than the average person, really love updating other peoples iPods. There are few feelings better than being handed an iPod and asked to upload 10 albums that I think someone will love. It’s such a fun game and when I succeed, I feel like a champ. However, every time I go home for a break I inevitably get asked by my father to update his iPod. The only problem is that my father’s music taste makes me question his sexuality. Which is obviously a very big issue.

You see, my father’s a generic baby boom listener. On his satellite radio, the top two music stations are Sirius XM Love and ’70s on 7. While these are verifiably two of the easiest stations to make fun of someone for listening to, the problem doesn’t stop here –– but seriously, how many times can you hear ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” before you should be changing the station? The problem is that this line of music is just not my forte. For some odd reason, “easy listening from 30 years ago” is missing from my music library. So, as you can see, when my dad handed over his little music box for the first time, I was musically stumped.

Since every car ride in my entire life had been a fight between me wanting to listen to the local college rock station and my dad wanting to listen to Cousin Brucie spin the same old oldies again and again, finally picking what my father would be listening to after 20 years couldn’t have been more thrilling. I saw this as a challenge, but also as the ultimate opportunity to change my father from “average Jewish accountant dad” to “average Jewish accountant dad with hip music taste.”

With his brand new mp3 player, I covered the average dad music bases from Simon & Garfunkel to Billy Joel to Fleetwood Mac. Then I went kind of nuts. I put everything from Diana Ross & the Supremes to Styx on there in the hopes that he was a fan and I just didn’t know. Then I thought, I’ll put the classics of our generation on there … you know, a little Strokes and Arctic Monkeys and Vampire Weekend. Also, in a moment of genius, I thought I could dupe him into testing out the Britpop bands that I love because they have the silliest of names like The Maccabees and Good Shoes and Los Campesinos. Finally, I put on that usual pop stuff that everyone knows because, why not? So Britney Spears and Beyonce, etc. made the jump onto my dad’s wide array of Justine-chosen music.

I was so excited for the months to come thinking that I’d get phone calls from dad and hear things like “Those Born Ruffian guys are great!” or “That Blink band you always talk about is actually pretty funny.” I was wrong. I was SO wrong. There were no phone calls for music chat. In fact, I didn’t hear about the iPod again until the next time I returned home from break. And when I did, the words I heard broke my heart. They went something like this, “Hey Justine, can you add more music to my iPod, I’m sick of what’s on there … Can you add more stuff like Kelly Clarkson?”

WHAT?!?! How can it be that I am the child of this man?! My entire family is full of brunettes and I’m the only redhead, and I’ve joked since I was a little girl that I was adopted. But when I heard “Kelly Clarkson” come forth from my fathers mouth, the joke was over. I was positive that for 21 years I had been lied to about being my parents’ biological child. There is just no way.

Defeated, I took the iPod back. Off came We Are Scientists and Pete & the Pirates and Cajun Dance Party and on went Katy Perry and Lily Allen and Feist –– quite an interesting assortment of music for a 55-year-old heterosexual father …

In a few weeks, I head home for thanksgiving break and I slightly fear the moment when my dad gives me his iPod. I haven’t come across a female singer/songwriter in quite some time. I’ve only got a boatload of male-fronted Britpop. Unless the newest next big thing replaces Rihanna in 20 days, the situation is looking quite bleak. So, music gods, I beg of you, although it’s been said that peoples’ music tastes are pretty set in stone once they hit their early 20s: could you please, just this once, give my dad’s ears a little tweak?