When I was in the third grade, for reasons that have never been discussed, my parents made me take piano lessons.  Since my parents were generally not in the business of foisting leisure activities upon me, or wasting money, the fact that they did both in this instance stands out, along with our brief attendance at a right-wing evangelical church, as the biggest mystery of my childhood*.  

The trouble with my piano lessons was that they combined something I had no interest in doing, with having to miss things I did have an interest in doing, such as buying candy while walking home from school.   To put the level of my dislike into perspective it it could be said that my interest in playing the piano was just above my interest in eating amoxicillin that my mother cut up and put into my apple sauce when I had sinus infections.  One of the biggest issues was that my lessons did not take place at home, but rather in a more or less abandoned classroom building on the campus of a then-defunct university.  The building was among the largest and scariest I’d ever entered and I spent most of my time in between lessons dreading the walk up the empty stairs, instead of practicing scales, or trying to learn how to play “Good King Wencelas”.

My piano lessons came to an abrupt end when I was told that I would be part of a recital.  For most kids, the notion of playing “Hot cross buns” in a room full of other people’s parents is merely lame, but for me it was terrifying.  My panic at the prospect of a recital stemmed from an experience a few years prior when I’d been forced to participate in an audition for a musical that required me to sing several bars of a song from the annoying play Oliver Twist, in a British accent, out loud, on a stage, in front of many people who were not my parents.  Not surprisingly, the audition did not go well and in addition to its immediate effect of my not getting the part, it had the added bonus of making me want to throw up at the mere thought of singing in front of anyone for approximately the rest of my life.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my early years as a musician because I recently began taking guitar lessons.  During my introduction at the first class I recounted some of my struggles with piano lessons to my instructor and he was not surprised.  He informed me that he prefers to teach adult like me as they are "smarter" than kids and "because they practice, usually because they want to learn how to play the guitar, and are not being forced to take lessons by their parents who are also signing them up for horseback riding, bagpipe lessons, Boy Scouts, homework, and indoor soccer".   

I am learning to play in a group lesson with five other people.  The members of this group share a similar lack of guitar experience but have very different interests.  One guy in particular has an interest in allegedly owning 1,400 pet fish (though he swears he is very close to simplifying his life by paring that number down, substantially) and spends at least five minutes of each class discussing how his prior instructor told him to make a “G” chord in a different way than our instructor even though our instructor said on the first day that this was not a problem.

I’m at the point now where I can figure out chord progressions for tunes I like and pick my way through tablature for most songs, as long as those songs consist of the eight chords I know, don’t have a difficult strumming or picking pattern, and can be played at about 40% of their intended pace.  Most recently, I learned to play “Bad moon rising” as well as several other simple guitar riffs that my wife pretends not to hate.

My goal is to be able to play or learn various songs to sing to the children I plan to have at some point in my future.  As of this moment, my plan is to sing to them when they are still young enough that they don't think everything I do is weird or embarrassing or stupid.  At some point, they will get tired of hearing me play "Bad Moon Rising" and will think everything I do is awful and will try to learn guitar for themselves, possibly to earn a part in a musical.  If this actually happens, I'll be thrilled, even if the musical is about pre-teen pickpockets.  Basically, I'm all for anything that instills a love of music without fear-induced vomiting.

*I hereby absolve my parents of all guilt associated with forcing me to take piano lessons - even though it was a weird idea.