This Thanking, I was blessed with the privilege of saying grace at our family gathering.

The expected speech must contain billions of "thank-you," especially to family members. All the words must be accompanied with the standard Reys smile, which includes all 32 teeth (this) is where my grandfather has to improvise and show all of his...gums). And you must swing your hips back and forth in expression of eternal appreciation and joy.

So last Thursday, I rocked the Reyes house down with my textbooks speech about how we should all be grateful that we have food to eat and such a great and loving family, using these guaranteed to woe techniques. But I felt something was missing. I felt that I had not be original.

I stopped swinging and stopped smiling and desperately thought about what I should be thankful for.

I squinted my eyes really tightly and when I finally opened them each member of my family was waiting for the grant finale--the "thank you" that would beat all others. My mother looked on proudly because she knew that her baby would come through for her.

Then I opened my mouth and said, "And finally, I am grateful for MUSIC!!!!!!"

My mother's head fell and my dad just said, "Let's eat the grub." Everyone trudged to their seat shaking their heads in disbelief.

But was the only "thank you" in the whole grace speech that I actually felt I meant.

Thanksgiving has lost a lot of its original and special meaning through the years. We are so programmed into what we should say or feel or what we should be thankful for.

It's not that family or food isn't important. It's just the fact that when these "thank-you" are uttered, they are often insincere. It is seldom that we really sit down and think about what is important and valuable in our lives. We say what others will approve of, what is written in some invisible bible on how to live life.

Music may not be the most cherished possession but it is something for which I am sincerely grateful. Music has come to symbolize the types of things that people can be grateful for. It is something, much like family and food, that we take for granted and hardly ever appreciate.

Music's important influence on our lives typically began in middle school--and, for some, even before then.

How many of our parents made us take music lessons? Many of us endured piano lessons and some were even forced to take tuba or clarinet lessons. (Now that's something most of us should be thankful for avoiding.)

For many, our love for music as a generation was catalyzed by our music lessons as impressionable youngsters. We either fell in love with tuba music and ran into the sores to buy Yanni CD's or we were dying to run the heck away from music like that, rebelling by listening to rock and roll bands, especially groups with very different ideas of how to use musical instruments.

Seeing as how we grew up with these types of music--we take these with us to college and beyond.