The Power of the Buffer

As many of you know, the Tweedle Twirp is the Human Buffer Zone. Originally, it was her job to keep the peace between my mother and me. However, over the years her role has expanded as necessary (especially with pregnancy hormones) to buffer between me and my father, me and my grandparents, and basically me and whoever looks at me funny. Yet, I've noticed that she's taken her job a step further, and she just buffers whoever happens to be around her, occasionally my parents with each other, family members who are starting to get antsy with one another, and probably random strangers on the street who are looking a little tense. Lately, though, she's been letting her power go to her head. She's been making declarations and rules in the name of buffering that really are just her own pet peeves that she wants stopped. For instance, my parents are singers. I don't mean they can sing (although my mother can hold her own; my father is as tone deaf as a rock). I mean they do sing. Frequently. It doesn't take much to set them off into song. Coming back from the airport, my mother was driving and my father was in the very back of the van (there are only four seats and there were five of us). Adam mentioned he changed planes in Copenhagen, and the next thing you know, my mother is singing the song about Copenhagen from Hans Christian Andersen. My father can't hear a thing that's going on in the front, and yet he, independently, starts singing the same song. Adam and I have an extremely off-kilter stereo thing going on, with neither side knowing what the other is doing. And then, remarkably, they both simultaneously segue into "Inchworm." I'm just staring out the window, Adam is amused, and my sister is groaning. So when we get home, the Tweedle Twirp makes a declaration in the name of buffering. "There shall be no songs sung this weekend that are pre-1985." The choosing of the year was brilliant on her part, as my father knows many songs that are just pre-1985. But this rules out anything from Glass Houses, Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," and, obviously, anything by the Beatles. Now, frankly, the singing doesn't bother me. Not at all. But I let the Tweedle Twirp's little charade go on, as it's only fair that I play the part in return for all the years of buffering. My father, of course, is going crazy, and he keeps asking things such as, "Are the Thompson Twins pre-1985?" He finally did a Web search, determined to find a post-1985 song that he can learn so he has something to sing this weekend. It failed, and TT quickly cuts him off the minute he begins humming anything: "That's not post-1985!"