Guitartown

I've started playing the guitar again.

It was a minor hobby I picked up during finals my junior year of college. I played a lot after I moved to DC--mainly because I spent a lot of time at home alone--and I haven't played much since moving to Little Rock.

But, I've rediscovered my love for the guitar. It's such a wonderful instrument for the musically disinclined.

When I was a child, my mother insisted that we learn to play the piano. It was the Southern thing to do, you know.

I love the way the piano sounds when it's played correctly, but I never really learned to read music, and I hated to practice.

Until I was a sophomore in high school, my mother was a Stay At Home Mom. Each day after school my older brother and I had few rules and a nice routine. We had about 30 minutes to sit, relax, have a snack, and watch television. Then we were to do our homework and practice piano after which we were free to play to our hearts' content--outside, of course.

I didn't so much mind the homework, but the 2o minutes of piano practice each day quickly led me to hate practicing.

So, I learned the basics, completed a few songs that I could play with abandon and continued to take piano lessons until I was 13 (I started at 5).

I quit piano because my other extracurricular activities required too much time to continue the 30 minute lesson each week. I was a cheerleader, I had a short lived career as a basketball player, and I was on the student council, National Honors Society, FBLA, and any other club that I believed the "cool people" older than me were a part of. Piano, thankfully at the time, was removed from my life.

I now wish that I'd kept up the lessons and really learned how to play. As my grandmother would say, "I have piano playing hands"--long fingers with a big reach.

But piano left my life and in college after longing for a hobby I picked up my mother's 1960 Gibson, and I loved it. Guitar requires no real skill if you just want to play some songs that you, and your friends at the lake, know. (For the record, you can take the guitar to places I've never understood--picking, bar chords, writing music.)

I put the guitar down a few years ago because of the lack of time and let it sit gathering dusk. But, I've picked it back up, and I love it again--just as strongly as I loved it the day I learned my first song.

Sadly, though, my poor little left hand fingers are just about to fall off my hand typing this because they're worn out from holding down those damn strings.

It's only a matter of time before I let that thing start gathering dust again.

Until then Dave, and the neighbors, will no doubt be sick of hearing Jack Ingram's Beat Up Ford played over and over again.

After all, it only requires three chords.
L.