Listen Up

“There you go, Grandpa,” said Andy, once he’d finished setting up the Sonos One Wireless Speaker. “It’s connected to the wifi so you can listen to anything you want now, right from your phone.”

“Wow, Andy,” said Grandpa. “It certainly is a thoughtful Christmas gift. But you can’t really mean that, can you? I can listen to anything I want?”

“This is the streaming age, gramps!” Andy picked up his grandfather’s phone from the coffee table. “Here, I’ll show you. Name an artist. Sinatra, maybe? Roy Orbison? James Brown? What do you want to hear?”

Grandpa pondered this for a minute. “How about… Little Greggy and the Teeth Kickers?”

Andy held the phone, his thumbs poised to type, but stopped just short. “Sorry, what?”

“Little Greggy and the Teeth Kickers,” Grandpa repeated. “They were just about my favorite group when I was your age!”

“Um, okay, sure.” Andy typed the name in, found a song, and played it.

From the Sonos One issued the sound of soft acoustic guitar and a crooning voice.

“This really isn’t what I expected,” Andy admitted. “But it’s nice! Is it one of those quote-unquote bands that’s actually just one guy?”

“Oh, not so!” Grandpa said, leaning forward. “The Teeth Kickers are there, alright. It’s only that they didn’t have much to do in the studio, what with the limited teeth available for kicking. It was the concerts where they really showed their worth.”

“Wait, the Teeth Kickers… actually kicked teeth?”

“Of course they did!” Grandpa shook his head. “This was back when a band’s name meant something, Andrew. You couldn’t call yourself the Teeth Kickers and not kick a few teeth.” He lifted his lip and showed Andy a gap where his right canine should be. “Lost this one to one of the Teeth Kickers way back when. Managed to retrieve it from the floor of the dancehall and even got the Teeth Kicker who did it to sign it after the show.”

“That’s insane,” Andy said.

“You’re telling me!” Grandpa said. “I’ve never seen handwriting so small. His name was Geoffrey Thorntenbach, and he signed the whole thing. Not ‘GT’ or even ‘Geoff.’ I always wondered if he used some sort of special pen.”

“No, I mean it’s insane that people went to a concert where people kicked them in the teeth,” Andy said.

“Well, you have to understand, the war had just ended,” Grandpa said.

Andy waited for more of an explanation. When none came, he asked, “So, hold on, do you still have the teeth?”

Grandpa looked downtrodden at this question. “Unfortunately, no. Your grandmother made me get rid of it when it was time to buy a house and start our family.”

“She didn’t want it around?” Andy said.

“Are you kidding? She loved that tooth! We met at a Kickers’ concert in the local community center. But we needed the money from selling the tooth to buy the house.”

Andy stared at his grandfather in disbelief. “You got enough from a signed tooth for a down payment on your house?”

“No,” Grandpa said.

“Ha, okay! Jeez, for a second there I thought you meant–”

“We got enough from the tooth to buy the whole house, and actually had a little left over for a cabin on the lake,” Grandpa clarified.

“Whoa,” Andy said.

By this point, the song had ended. Another came on after. Crowd noises indicated it to be a live recording. Again, acoustic guitar began, a crooning voice over top, but Andy could just make out something else in the background.

Grandpa bobbed his head along to the tune. “Wow, you were right about the audio quality for this Sonos. The kicking really comes through nicely!”