“Daddy, is there any way iTunes can add a beep to a song?”

     “Uh.”

     “I mean, could we take the mp3, and, you know, make it so when it plays, it has a…”

     It starts to dawn on me what she’s asking.

     “Olivia, do you mean, like, a bleep?”

     “Um. Yeah. Like, if there’s an explicit version of a song…”

     “…You want to bleep out the words, right?”

This is my eleven-year-old daughter. She wants to download songs from iTunes to put on her beloved iPod Mini. But she’s concerened, because some of the songs she wants, like several from Green Day’s American Idiot are explicit. She can’t get the clean versions, but she wants the songs.

This is where the dichotomy lies. Because on the one hand, there’s my little girl. She’s thinking, simple problem, simple solution. Solve the problem. Don’t be defeated. Don’t be afraid to change things to make them work the way you want.

On the other hand — hell. How on earth can she be related to me with an attitude like that about four letter words?

Now I just gotta find a simple sound file editor that can do what she wants, and see if she’s willing to listen to the words long enough to get the bleeps in the right place…