My mother, hoping to unearth a talented individual, signed me up for private and group piano lessons at Illinois Wesleyan at about 8 or 10 years old. My sister was also a part of this experiment. I would have to go early, while Ariana had her lesson, and wait for mine. During this time, I would look around for interesting things to do for the 30 minutes of wait time. I would use the pay phone to repeatedly call the operator and ask for phone numbers of my friends. I don't know why this would be interesting, but I did it. Then I would get on the floor and look for change under the vending machines. We were sugar-deprived children and I was looking to hit up the snacks. I would occasionally bring my change from home, but it was often made up of mostly pennies. As many buyers are aware, vending machines don't take pennies. One day, I was desperate for Twinkies, and I had a handful of pennies. I asked a passerby if they could give me a quarter for all the pennies I had. The man looked at me and asked why I wanted the quarter (he must have seen me rooting around under the machines for change). I quickly pulled out a lie from my pack of deception. I told him I needed to buy an eraser from my piano teacher and she told me she didn't want my pennies (as if any teacher in the world would say that to their student). He lifted an eyebrow[n] and gave me the quarter, but told me to keep my pennies. I watched him walk around the corner and then made a dash to the vending machine.
During these private lessons, I was often scolded for my lack of progress and the length of my fingernails. I refused to cut them. The teacher finally brought in nail clippers and cut them herself. In the group lessons, I fell behind the other prodigy students and could not perform with the rest of the group. We had electric pianos that the teacher could plug into and listen to an individual play. During these times, I would just switch my piano off and pretend to play with the rest. She never said anything about it. No harm, no foul.
It was not very surprising when they sent a letter to my mom indicating that I was on probation. Then another followed - double probation. Finally, I was kicked out. Dang.
After that debacle and waste of money, I didn't attempt to conquer the piano again until college. I signed up for private lessons my senior year. At the end of the semester, the teacher told me it might be better if I stuck to playing songs I had heard before.
That same semester (masochistically), I also signed up for guitar lessons. I had bought a red guitar one day because it matched my purse and I dreamed of playing it and entertaining crowds. The first day of lessons, my teacher (who was ranked as a Grand Master), eyed my red acoustic guitar and informed me that these were going to be classical guitar lessons. I shrugged and we began a semester-long tug-of-war, with me trying to distract him with funny stories and him trying to make me play the guitar. The last day of class, I still couldn't play Greensleeves. He gave me a "B" and I was angry. He was a very interesting, and easily distracted individual.
After all of these failures, you would think that I would have thrown in the red guitar. But no, here I am again, about to be 27 years old, and picking up that dang red guitar with dreams of entertaining again. So far it isn't going as well as expected. But you might hear me on the radio very soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment