I think I might be adopted

I came to a startling realization while on vacation. I am the ONLY one of six children who doesn't play guitar (incidently, I am also the ONLY left-handed child).

Think about it. What are the odds that every single child in the family, except one, would take up the same musical instrument? Not great, I'm reckoning.

So, I signed up for guitar lessons. And, I took my first lesson last night.

I actually struggled with this decision because my first experience with music didn't end well. Let me explain.

When I was in the first grade, I decided I wanted to learn to play the piano. I became passionate about it. It was all I ever thought about or talked about or WHINED about. Incessantly, I would bother my parents (who had very little money, by the way) to get me a piano and get me lessons so I could learn to play. I guess they finally decided that the path to peace was going to cost them a piano.

For six months, I studied and practiced and took lessons and eventually I even performed in a recital. It was wonderful. Then at the height of my first grade career, I decided "I don't like piano anymore" and I quit. No amount of cajoling, threats, bribes...or anything else, could get me to change my mind.

It was not a popular decision around the house. While the piano faded into the background as a musical instrument it emerged to become a convenient collection area for coats, books, science projects and the occasional pet entertainment center. The cat would sometimes walk across the keys evoking a paroxysm of laughter from me and the "dark" look from mom.

This went on for years. Mom came to hate that piano. No one in the house played it (except the cat) and I think it became some kind of terrible crusade for her to get rid of it. Eventually, when I was a senior in high school, she had had enough. She put an ad in the paper and tried to sell it. When that didn't work, she called Goodwill and offered to donate it. They said they'd love to have it but that she would have to deliver it. Well THAT was never going to happen, so what she did next shows just how desperate she had become.

She pressed every neighborhood kid she could into service and as I arrived home from school one afternoon, I saw them all pushing the piano out of the house and into the backyard. When I went around back I saw that someone had dug a very big, very deep hole. Next, I saw hatchets attacking the piano from all directions. Wood chips were flying everywhere. As pieces became separated they got thrown into the hole. Finally, the huge piece that was left, that couldn't be chopped up, was laid to rest on top of the other pieces and then the whole thing was covered up.

Today, a concrete patio erases my first foray into music.

Now here I am again, one step into the "music" pool for a second time. Excited to be learning something new, something that I think will give me pleasure. How will it all turn out?

I don't know the answer to that, but I do know 2 things.

1. A guitar doesn't require a very big hole.
2. If I can't learn the guitar it must mean I'm adopted.