there was once when i wanted to learn to play the acoustic guitar. i was telling everyone this for about eleven months before i whined to the wrong person. my friend wend, a regular bass player, happened to have an old guitar lying around the house so he SENT it to me. it arrived in a well packed cardboard box the size of a human coffin.
immediately i searched for learning materials. i borrowed all the instructional video tapes from every library within a 98 mile radius. i even hit up one of my then colleagues for books and techniques. i was making some decent effort.
one night while learning to tune my very own guitar, i broke the finest string. i forget the name of the string now. it really scared me. the booiing sound it made reverberated in my head well into my sleep. so the next day i left work early so i could have my guitar re-stringed.
it turned out i had over tightened the string because: 1. the guitar was not well made, or so i was told, so it couldn't be tuned properly; and 2. i hadn't developed an ear for tuning yet. and that's why i tuned and tuned until i broke the string. the shop guy seemed pretty genuine but, now that i think about it, he might have said that so he could sell me a digital tuner. i bought everything he said.
i left the guitar shop feeling pretty good. my guitar was in tune and i spent all evening immitating the instructor on the video playing "michael row the boat ashore." try as i might, my fingers wouldn't press the strings where i wanted them to. my right hand felt detached from my control. my fingers bent and twisted weirdly like individual aliens.
night after night after night. my husband was getting pretty sick of hearing the instructor sing the same songs again and again. especially the kumbaya hallelujah song, it drove him nuts. but i kept at it. nightly. religiously.
some two weeks would go by before i celebrated the day when i finally gained control of my index finger. i could press it on any string i wanted. i was overjoyed. my attempt at a musical future looked positive. i chatted with wend all day about it the next day. he patted my ego, letting me believe that, in a matter of days, my fingers would produce beautiful legal chords. i believed!
that very evening, i went home and, in my unharnessed eager, i picked up the guitar, turned on the video, and did what i had blissfully avoided doing: i began tuning.
BOOIINNNG
i broke the finest string again! i was horrified. the very moment it snapped, i shot up from a crossed leg sitting position, and dropped the guitar from my lap.
this past weekend i saw the guitar case in the corner of the garage. i paused for a moment to look at it and sighed, "well, it may only have five strings, but it sure is safe and warm in that case."
