Greetings,
I know it has been a long time since a regular blog entry, perhaps my longest hiatus since I started. Random thoughts have come to my head from time to time but nothing truly blogworthy. However, I wanted to let you know about my Christmas present given to me by my wife. First, a little background…
Every year the wife and I have a little contest on who can give the best Christmas gift. We have been together for 15 Christmases prior to the most recent one and so far (though I would have to check the official record books) I am 14 wins and 1 loss. The wife’s sole victory came when several years ago when she had a cable outlet installed in our bedroom. Bonus points in that she kept that hidden from me and gave me a small TV (which I thought was useless since I did not know about the new cable outlet). Other than that one year, she has come out on the losing side every other time. This year though, she improved her overall record to 2 and 14 when she bought me an acoustic guitar. In my defense, she told me NOT to buy her anything since she had already spent our combined budget for each other’s gifts (though I doubt if I could have won anyway).
I have wanted to learn how to play guitar for years now. My mother bought me a guitar a long, long time ago and the only thing I recall about it is that we sold it in garage sell to a Mexican man who picked it up and played it with ease. Since that time (probably 25 years ago), I have not played any guitar (though I did pick up my son’s small guitar when he was taking lessons, but other than inspecting it I did nothing else). I think part of the reason I have avoided guitars is my fear that I would not be able to play it well or I would be a slow learner and would get frustrated and quit. For this reason, I limited my looking for a guitar to my favorite pawn shop in Kokomo (there were a dozen or so guitars there at any given time). I almost pulled the trigger when I was in Kokomo early December but I did not have a way to get it back home without carrying it on the plane with me.
In the end it was a good thing that I did not buy one then as the wife had already purchased my gift and was hiding it at a friend’s house. Not only did she get me a guitar but also a guitar case along with a variety pack of picks, an electronic tuner and a book showing some chords. She took her time and did her research and got a great gift so my hats off to her (though I still have a commanding lead in the gift contest). I half joked that the guitar case had a nice little compartment for me to hold all my guilt and shame for when June rolls around and I still don’t know how to play anything. This is where the blog title comes in.
The guitar laid by my bedside for all of December and most of January before I picked it up and (with pick in hand) turned to YouTube for some beginning instructions. There are quite a few out there but after a few videos I decided that I would just learn on my own. I contorted my fingers and tried to make the chords that were in the chord book and a few even sounded decent. I found a site that listed some easy songs to learn and once I had figured out the D-G-Dsus-D-Asus pattern I was playing (albeit like a 45 played on 33 speed) Free Falling by Tom Petty. For the past few weeks I have alleviated any shame I thought I would have with consistent practicing and very sore left fingertips. I was even playing Puff the Magic Dragon (again, think 45 played at 33 speed) this morning as I was teaching the daughter the tune. Who knows, in a few weeks we might be a duo! At any rate, I have a little momentum now and even a fresh excuse or two for not blogging (too little time due to guitar practice and mighty sore fingertips!).
Jon
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