We had a conversation on Christmas day last year about music. It turned out to be an anthropological survey in the decline of civilization as we knew it, without really knowing it.

It came up somehow on that sacred morning day that one of our children had attended a concert about the age of 18 of the modern-day performer Little Wayne.

We reflected on the profane lyrics I had discovered in my research on the performer when permission had been requested to attend the show. My conclusion at the end of it all was to allow the almost 18-year-old to make the decision on their own in order to foster opportunities for good decision-making on the road to adulthood.

It really didn’t work out the way I envisioned but at least it is a story I will be able to tell my grandchildren one day about their parent.

The story was just getting finished when my father-in-law, Jamie Boring, related an experience from his youth.

For those of you who don’t share the pleasure of knowing Jamie, he is 85 and the picture of a gentleman.

It turns out he and friend Charlie Breedlove took the liberty of having a gathering at the Breedlove home one evening when the Breedlove parents were out of town. A stack of records was apparently left in position on the record player.

Several nights later when the Breedloves had their regular card night with friends, Mr. B turned on the player and the first record to drop on the deck blared the sounds of that old classic, “Big-legged woman.” It was scandalous on many levels. One of the more salacious lyrics suggested the woman’s charms could, “… make a bulldog hug a hound.”

My, how times have changed.

All of this music (if you count Little Wayne) talk came up because of Ringo Starr coming to town last night. The Beatles were their own sort of scandal-in-the-making when they hit the scene in the ’60s. My awareness of them was mostly through aunts and uncles 10 to 15 years older than me who were in the middle of the revolution.

I could walk in my grandparent’s house on Third Street and hear my uncle Thomas playing Beatles tunes on the piano. Like many people, I came to my own fondness for many of the band’s creations. The crazy thing from my perch was watching those guys navigate life. McCartney seemed to be the one all the girls feigned over with Harrison and Lennon not far behind. Ringo was the quirky drummer who seemed to be in the background, of everything.

It made sense to me McCartney married Linda Eastman, but I never got the attraction between Lennon and Yoko. Harrison wrote the song Sinatra called “the greatest love song of the past 50 years” in “Something.”

After the band broke up, there were many weird stories flying around about individual members. It seems, in many ways, Ringo has turned out pretty normal for a guy who grew up kind of sickly and without much proper education. At 75 he’s still doing what he loves.

Celebrity net worth suggests his fortune at around $300 million and on top of that he has managed to stay married to bond girl Barbara Bach for 34 years. In the music and modeling world, you would almost have treat those like dog years.

For a guy in the background you’d have to think Ringo is laughing all the way to the bank.

Maybe he’s the guy that started the whole thing about the drummer getting the girl.