Cross country practices run before school, so it’s an early start to the day for the kiddos. To compensate for the bleary-eyes, we always open up all the windows and blast music as we pull up to the school.

We do it on regular days, too (click here to see). On cross country mornings, though, we have one of their friends with us, and she’s much quieter than they are.

Last Wednesday, however, my wife had taken the ipod with her and I had no CDs. I searched the radio, but it had a whole lot of nothing.

“Sorry guys,” I said. “No music this mornig.”

“Aww!”

“I know,” I said. “Sorry. I should have checked before we left.”

“We can still pretend,” my youngest said.

“Yeah,” his older brother said.

Their friend laughed. It was one of those “I can’t believe this is happening” sort of laughs, halfway between “I am so embarrassed” and “this is so cool.”

We opened all the windows, and as the mini van rolled to its stop, all four of us were waving our hands in the air and bobbing our heads in time to imaginary music.

“Let it rock!” my oldest shouted.

And it did. The kids jumbled out of the mini-van, waving and laughing, and I pulled away, still enjoying the music in my head.