Piano Lessons: Part 1

This one time I took piano lessons for 14 years and it was pretty average.

In this story, my mother was flogging a dead horse, and I was a lazy, whiny child.
Let's go back to a time when Captain Planet was teaching me how to recycle and the Care Bears were, well, doing ALL the caring. Maybe the Care Bears should have been recycling too, then we would have stroked two birds with one stick. I was four when I starting taking piano lessons. For the next 12 years (with a one-year (even worse) violin sabbatical) I continued to go to piano lesson every week. Here are some things about it...

That Which I liked:

• For the majority of my esteemed piano career, I was taught be a lady named Margaret. She lived next door. She was always very kind to me.
• I started to babysit her child as soon as I was old enough. He was entertaining. He was adopted and I have since learned that he is autistic. He would always interrupt our piano lessons with non-sequiturs, like that kid who likes toytles.
• One year, he told me he wanted 'cerated-edged scissors and cellotape' for Christmas. What a strange gift. I didn't have the heart to tell him that he was weird, and that most pairs of scissors aren't actually cerated.
• Babysitting was fun because this family had a nice house and a nice couch, and hardly any work was required of me. Something that I became interested in during this time was figuring out how many Tim Tims was an acceptable amount to eat. I knew I would be given the whole packet anyway, but deluxe biscuits were exciting to me at this time, and it was a question of balance between a) not wanting to look like greedy, and b) being concerned about pack weight on the hike home. 
• Babysitting allowed me realise just how much I love looking through other peoples' pantries. C'mon. Get with me here. We all do. These specific pantries always featured an abundance of the fancier kind of food, but there was always a shit tonne of cask wine. I guess some people just really like cask wine?!
• AND they had Sky TV. (Sky TV is my pert little country's name for cable.) More than four channels was a pretty exciting thing and it was there that I discovered Jared Leto and his phenomenal bone structure. 
• Margaret's husband was super nice. His name was Colin and he was from Jersey. Not like the Jersey-Shore-Jersey, but the Jersey-off-the-coast-of-France-Jersey. Maybe that's where Jersey Caramels are from. Also, maybe not. Colin was one of the few adults in my life who I recall talked to me like an actual person, not just a half person. I even pretended to be interested in golf for him.
• Wait, this is about the piano?
• Chromatic scales were pretty. Fucking. Rad.
• I liked the way my nails sounded when they clicked on the keys. Margaret didn't like this, though. That made me like it a little more, because it was starting to taste the sweetness of middle-class rebellion.

That Which I Hated:

• Putting effort into something that I didn't find fun.
• The instability of my later piano career. When I was a teenager, we decided I was bad at the piano because Margaret was too nice. I don't really think that this was true, but after this epiphany, I changed teachers twice. I'll call one of them 'Angry Old Lady' and the other one 'Nice Old Lady' because I actually don't remember their names. Nice Old Lady would always interrupt the lesson to talk to her cat. Nicely. 
• In a desperate attempt to quit piano, I told mum I wanted to learn another instrument instead. Problem with this was that I failed to realise that the piano is one of the best instruments out there. In a stupid decision, I choose to learn the violin in a one-year sabbatical. I was trying to escape from my increasingly weary thoughts, and I had outright asked mother if I could quit. The only way she would budge was by letting me do an instrument switcheroo. Don't ask why I chose the violin. I can't tell you. Big mistake for both me and the people who had to hear me practice for that full 30 minutes per week.
• Exams. I hated these the most. 'They' would import these stuck-up old bitches from England to judge. In hindsight, these old people may have been the kind of ladies to buy their grandchildren ALL the icecream sundaes on family outings, while wearing ridiculously big hats, and they would happily reminisce about the bygone age where mail came TWICE a day. But to me, in those soul-sucking examination halls, they just seemed like the kind to hate black people and anything that hippies represent. Even more, though, they especially disliked 'the youth of today'. Oh, and they didn't smile. Ever. The exams would always take place in a very old and very large room. The ambiance was so unsettling and I was a nervous child.
• I always had my lessons on a Monday and for some strange reason, I would always get a headache on Mondays, like clockwork. It was as if my brain was telling me that the Royal School of Music can. not. fit. inside.

I will tell you more things later! 

Other thoughts from me this week:

• When the Olympics are on, I turn into a strange person who doesn't sleep. I reach a strange quality of cranky because I'm tired, crazy because I drink coffee to compensate, and happy because I have watched unfamiliar and exciting sports. 
• There's this thing called Sriracha butter. I'm pretty sure this is just where you grab some butter and some Sriracha and mix with a paddle, but it sounds like it has Jesus-like qualities. 
• At work the Korean employees have to wear these red blazers. They have epaulettes and little medals, too. It makes me feel like they are in the Royal Navy from the 1700s, and it makes me want to dress all the foreign staff up to look like pirates. 

This is the video I carefully selected for you:

THE END

Liz Tritops 

xoxo