One more of my #SIFStories.
I started playing SIF when my second son was a year old, so I would sit in the room with him and play songs to pass the time. His favorite song quickly became Snow Halation, so I searched for different videos of it on Youtube. He would watch them all entranced, especially those with dancing. Live, animated, cover group, he had no preference, as long as they were playing his favorite song.
Snow Halation quickly became his comfort song, and I had to keep a copy of it on my phone so that any time he was stressed or had trouble behaving, we could throw it on and he would settle down and watch it over and over.
As we often do we went to Otakon and pushed him around in the stroller. My wife and I met through our involvement in different fansubbing groups, hers focused on Digimon among other shows. She and another subber wanted to go to the Digimon panel that year. We arrived at the room only to find it was already at capacity.
We stood around discussing what to do next when suddenly my son jumped out of his seat and walked into the room next door! I quickly followed him only to realize that he heard Snow Halation coming from the room and had to see it. Inside we found a μ’s dance group teaching people how to cheer at idol concerts. He had a blast watching them perform and cheering along, even jumping at the right time in Snow Halation.
The next day of the con they put on a show and he got a front-row seat and watched the whole show enraptured.
Eventually, I bought him the box set of all the songs from LLSIP and he would watch it from beginning to end. When Hurricane Matthew came by to pay us a visit we expected to lose power and planned accordingly. To help him out I put on “his singers” (his name for μ’s) and told him he could watch it until the power went out. Lo and behold we never lost power and he watched it over and over for 8 hours, always being sure to stand on a prop so he could jump at the right moment in his favorite song.
Sadly as the years have gone by he has decided that his singers are for girls and he will pretend to not like it, but I catch him stopping what he’s doing if he hears them. Lucky for us he has a younger brother now.
