The violin shone with a deep-orange-brown finish, slick ebony fingerboard, rounded tuning pegs, and chin rest. As the store clerk placed it on my shoulder, I could smell fresh varnish and see no scratches on its finish, a sign that it was a brand new instrument, not someone else's cast off. It was January when I took home the violin. All the other students in third grade had begun lessons in September when the school music teacher measured our hands, looked at our mouths, teeth, and cheeks to determine which instrument was the best fit. Violin was his choice for me then. I was already four months behind my classmates when my lessons began. Not getting what you want when you want it can make it all the sweeter. Has this ever been your experience? Comment below.
2 Comments
Susan Wayland
9/17/2015 09:11:01 am
OH YEAH! I rarely got what I wanted when I wanted it growing up. My parents would tell me it wasn't in the budget, and of course they were right. However, learning to wait for the right time, and to work toward a goal, was so much better for me in the long run than getting everything I wanted when I wanted i! I often shake my head at parents today who give their little ones everything under the sun just for the asking (or whining)!
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Brooks Gibson
9/21/2015 11:02:07 am
Robin, this was a great e-mail. I taught some classical guitar students during my college days and had some wonderful experiences getting many children and adults started on the guitar. However, I had one 12-year-old girl who, after three lessons, was clearly just miserable bringing her guitar to lessons and was very unhappy, to the extent that I knew, as most teachers can tell, that she was not practicing. I had to probe into her reasons for taking guitar lessons, and she said that her father was insisting on them. We struggled on together for about two or three more lessons, but I eventually spoke with her father. When I discontinued our lessons, I always wondered whether he simply trotted her off to a new guitar teacher and put her through the same torture. Keeping her as a student would have amounted to stealing money from the parents each week. I only hope the parents, trying to force this on their daughter, did not end up turning her off to any musical instrument of any kind for the rest of her life. She was a sweet and intelligent child, and I still think about her, thirty-five years later.
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