I’m a firm believer that it pays to acknowledge your weaknesses and remain humble and self deprecating.  What I actually think of myself you’ll never know.  You’ll find no evidence.  But as a kid in the burbs where tranquilized housewives bragged about their kids, my mother desperately wanted to get me in the game.  

I couldn’t hit a baseball.  I couldn’t shoot hoops.  Tennis anyone?  Zero hand/eye coordination. So she decided she could outdo the others by granting me piano lessons.  She chatted with her friends by the pool armed with Chardonnay.

Tranquilized Housewife #1:    Isn’t that a little effeminate.

Tranquilized Mother (mine):   Well Liberace plays the piano and he’s a man.  That’s nonsense.

Tranquilized Housewife #2:    Well has he expressed any interest in learning to play the piano? 

Tranquilized Housewife #3:    Janet, you don’t even own a piano.

Tranquilized Mother (mine):   Why do you always focus on the negatives?

So I took piano lessons.  I practiced chromatic scales and arpeggios.  I practiced every single day.  I caught on to many of the disapproval signs like my mother firing up the vacuum cleaner each time I started.  Neighbors closing their windows.  Canines losing their shit.  In some cases, on our lawn.

My teacher was Mr. Morrison.  He was probably in his sixties and had a decent career in the city until his arthritis got too out of control.  So I think he turned to the bottle.  He wreaked of booze pouring out of his pores and had stanky breath.  Now piano is pretty up close and personal.  The shaping of the hands.  Striking the keys correctly. I was inhaling not just his booziness but he also smoked.  That one hour a week was torture.  After the lesson, he’d give my parents an update.  I’d eavesdrop from the staircase.

“It’s going to take some time.  Double his rehearsal and let’s up the lessons to two per week.

I wanted to change my name and move.  Even I couldn’t listen to myself.  I could eventually press the right keys, but it would take a while to find the next one.  Like most professionals, I was not at all gliding across the keyboard as much as assaulting it.  

Close to Christmas, my mother wanted me to learn Claire de Lune.  Every kid learns it at some point.

(Skipping to the present, I cannot stomach that song nor Moon River, two of the usual starter pieces.)

It’s Christmas Day and my mother announces that I’m about to entertain the guests.

I proceeded to the bench.  They clapped.

Ten seconds later many of the guests were heading back to the bar to freshen up their cocktails. Some just jiggled their ice cubes to drown me out.  My grandfather demanded to know how much money my mother sacked into this dead end career move.  

Lots of “gee it’s getting late” proclamations, though the sun hadn’t even set.  Most of the menfolk headed to the basement to watch the football game.  By the end of it there were three people left, including myself and my mother.  Her face was buried in her hands.

“All I wanted was to give him a chance.”

“You did great Janet.”

All I wanted was to take an axe to that frigg’n Wurlitzer.