Piano!

I have a long history with piano, although most people who know me don't know that. I took lessons with a few different teachers when I was between four and seven years old. However, when I was seven or eight, I became best friends with a girl whose mom (Sarah) taught piano lessons. Sarah got to put up with me for the next ten or more years of lessons.

That's right. Over ten years of hammering away (literally) on those piano strings. I started on a little bitty keyboard, but Sarah eventually convinced my family that I needed a real piano. Fortunately, we had one. It just really needed to be tuned, and maybe it needed a small repair or something. My parents were nice and made that happen. In the long run, I think they realized it was a good choice. After years of practice and Sarah's instruction, I became fairly good at piano, and a point came when it was actually pleasurable to listen to me.

Unless you were listening to me perform. Then you'd wonder if I bothered to practice. Why? Because I have enough adrenaline for a herd of stampeding elephants. I would sit in my seat waiting for my turn to perform, and I'd feel my hands grow cold. My heart would race. I would sweat. My brain would feel like it was exploding. All I would want to do is get out of that room. But my turn would come, and I would take a little bow, sit down, and proceed to mangle the piece that I had practiced hours and hours and hours. My knees would literally jump up and down as my adrenaline ruined my body's control. I'd plow through to the end, stand up, take another little bow, quite possibly give the audience a horrified expression, and then walk to my seat and burst into tears. Again. And again. And again.

You might be thinking that I probably should have tried to prevent this. Oh but I did. I took deep breaths. I prayed. I thought positive thoughts. I remembered all the hours I put into the piece and how I was ready. Sarah helped to get me to a seminar on performance anxiety. None of it worked. Seriously.

I graduated from high school with probably half the town wondering how I made it through Level 10 Syllabus and how I got into the Honor's Recital each spring. Little did they know that I actually practiced and could apparently play quite well for one kind lady or gentleman adjudicator each spring. I'm sure that it's a mystery of epic proportion for some people in Newport.

When I left for college, somehow the piano didn't get to come with me. I also suddenly had more schoolwork devouring my time. I played on the piano in the dorm about once a week the first year, but after that, it became challenging to make it to a practice room on campus to play. I ended up only playing once every couple of months for the next few years, and I missed playing more often.

Then enters this guy:

Why hello there!

I have been on again off again searching for a good quality digital piano on Craigslist for awhile. New keyboards are expensive and take a lot of materials and energy to make, so I really wanted to just wait it out until I found something used locally. During the summer, I thought I found a catch, but I experienced a nightmare situation by accidentally bringing home a midi controller (something that needs a computer hooked up to have a brain) that didn't connect to my laptop. It was like dating a person who just isn't right for you and you know you need to end it. Thankfully, for a small price and a little bit of panicked emailing, the person I bought it from took it back. Months later, I browsed on Craigslist and this pretty little keyboard is sitting there. I looked at reviews, and people seemed fairly pleased. I had hundreds of dollars of birthday and Christmas money saved up, and a piano is really the only thing I had even considered using the money on.

So I went and tried it out. And I bought it. And I know that it was meant to be because one of the demos was a song that I had played my junior year.

And that's my piano story for the day! *happy face*