I spent a fortune on a digital piano with weighted, touch-sensitive keys and all three pedals to get as close to the 'real' piano experience as possible, then spent another fortune on weekly lessons that went from something Em got excited about to something she saw as an unbearable chore. This in less than two years.
My original plan was that my kids would have mandatory piano lessons from age five to high school graduation. I've heard so many pianists say they're glad their parents didn't let them quit.
Then I thought about my own experiences with Scouts, how my parents wouldn't let me quit until I made Webelo. Which took forever, because I hated the stupid merit-badge projects.
The taunts and even physical abuse my fellow Cub Scouts dished out to me. Right in front of the so-called Den Mother, who seemed to share my mates assessment that I was obnoxious and deserving of punishment for existing. I should have either acted up sufficiently to get expelled from the organization, claimed to be gay (I didn’t know that was a way out or I might have done it), or raced through the merit-badge projects and been done with it.
And it was just that my parents didn’t want me to learn the habit of quitting. I didn’t tell them about the bullying, because I had learned the habit of simply accepting a baseline of debasement at the hands of my peers. It didn’t seem remarkable to me because with no Den Mother or teacher in sight, these same boys really released the hounds.
It wasn’t until Frau Lobster talked me into a camping trip when I was in my early 20s that I found out there’s actually something besides hobby rockets, helicopter egg-drop and the archery range to be enjoyed in the woods. And I still don’t give a damn how to tie any kind of knot or any of the other projects I slogged through to finally get that Webelo rank and quit. Yeah, the little gravity propelled cars, that was kind of fun, but on the whole that blue and yellow uniform only reminds me what a bunch of assholes little boys can be.
As Em started bucking the piano regime I thought about all the things my parents tried to regiment, and how it basically achieved the opposite of its intended result. They required me to put half my newspaper route money into savings, which is a smart thing to do, but I resented it. I’m not blaming my parents for my bad money management and spendthrift tendencies, but it’s not hard for me to figure out where my unhealthy habits and attitudes come from. The ‘balance time’ Dad expected me to put in, suffer an hour of music he thought was tolerable to pay for every hour of music I wanted to listen to.
No way did I want to raise my daughter to hate the piano, maybe hate playing music.
A couple of years go by, and now she’s asking to come down to my den and play the piano. And she’s co-opted Mo’s guitar and has been carrying it with her everywhere, even in the car, trying to figure it out. Accepting a limited amount of instruction from dear old Dad, still trying to get over the discomfort of fretting a string. In other words, she’s doing exactly what I was doing at her age. And it’s so wonderful!
Em on the road.
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