When I was ten or eleven, my brother and I took guitar lessons with a teacher from our school. He was tall and lanky; we were short and lanky. Our mom would drop us off at his house where we’d take turns in the living room plucking out semi-recognizable melodies while the other sibling did homework. I don’t remember anything about how to play the guitar, but I do remember that for my first lesson my teacher asked me to burn a CD of songs that I wanted to learn how to play. This felt like a huge improvement from the clip art-riddled lesson books handed to me when I was learning piano.

The first song I picked was “Sons & Daughters” by the Decemberists, which I felt pretty cool about since it was cool older brother music (that album starts with a song called “The Crane Wife 3,” I mean come on). But as he put the disc in his computer and pressed play, I was filled with nerves and completely unsure about my selection. Maybe this was actually a really hard song and maybe my cool brothers weren’t actually cool and this wasn’t actually a cool band. But barely ten seconds in, my teacher paused it, played the beginning back, and with surprising enthusiasm said, “Oh, this is perfect! I couldn’t have picked a better one.” I was so jazzed. By a complete fluke, I was the perfect pupil (which was huge for ten year old Christina…and twenty-four-year old Christina). It was definitely not a test, but I got an A and I remember it. That probably says something about my psyche…

But my guitar career wasn’t all accidental glory. There is a scene burned into my memory that captures another part of my psyche: the ol’ I-didn’t-do-something-quite-right-but-I’m-too-embarassed-to-let-you-find-out-so-I’ll-go-to-great-lengths-and-inconvenience-to-hide-it-from-you feature.

After a lesson, my brother and I said goodbye, squeezing ourselves out the screen door with our massive guitar cases only to find the driveway empty. No mom or minivan in sight. Maybe we ended early or she was just a little late picking us up, but neither of us had phones and we weren’t about to go back inside to wait. We had already said goodbye (which would be embarrassing to retract,) and we didn’t want it to look like we didn’t know when we were supposed to leave (it would be embarrassing to be wrong). But we couldn’t just stand in the driveway in full view of our teacher still in the living room. He’d wonder why we didn’t just come back inside (it would be embarrassing to be awkward). So after a quick, panicked discussion, my brother and I decided to just start walking down the street.

It’s a pitiful, endearing, and slightly Dickensian image: two pale, scrawny siblings with oversized guitar cases strapped to their backs, walking slowly along a quiet street, not entirely sure about the direction they’re headed but hoping that help will come along soon. We didn’t make it far before our mom drove up in the minivan. I love imagining the view for her—cruising along through a lovely wooded neighborhood and then on the side of the road she spots two wandering child troubadours—wait, those are my wandering child troubadours. Why are they wandering? She pulled over and we clambered in, drowning our embarrassment in Oreos when we got home.

I do not know how to play guitar. But I do still want people to approve of my music taste, and I do still want people to never witness my mistakes. It was the beginning of a life of waiting in bathroom stalls, taking the long way through dining halls, and just googling it later—anything to avoid looking like I don’t know what’s happening. I’m fine with failure, just let me do it in anonymity, please. I’ll laugh about it later, I promise.

3 Comments

  1. Jill

    Piano Book Clip Art is all too real

    Reply
  2. Josh Parks

    Wow this is my life. The number of extra steps I’ve taken to avoid a /scene/…

    Reply
  3. Christina Ribbens

    10,000 of those a day ammiright

    Reply

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