2 Days: Piano Lessons

I can't play the piano. I can read music really well, and I can pick out the soprano and alto parts just fine, but I can't actually play the piano. So you might never know that I took lessons for a year and a half when I was little.

I bounced around between teachers, but at one point I was in a class with a bunch of other students whose parents aspired to make them Mozarts. It was in a building just off Main Street, a medium-sized room lined with electronic keyboards and piano benches. Our teacher would stand in the middle of the room and instruct us on the proper technique, and then she'd set us to practicing, while she walked around the room and listened to individual students.

I was always a bright kid. When I sat down at that keyboard I noticed that there were a bunch of buttons that I'd never had on our real piano at home. First of all, I could manipulate the volume. Secondly, I could record what I was playing. Once I'd figured this out, my plan was set.

Listening to the teacher lecture was boring and pointless, to my little-kid mind. I could figure out how to play the song much faster on my own. So while my teacher spoke, I turned the volume of my keyboard all the way down to zero. I hit the record button and started to play the song, in complete silence. I did this again and again until I had played it perfectly all the way through. Then I waited for the teacher to finish her lecture and let us practice on our own.

She'd finish soon after that, usually, and the room would fill with the sound of twenty stubby fingers fumbling their way through "Go Tell Aunt Rhody."  That was my cue. I turned the volume back up and hit play.The song I had just recorded would start playing, over and over again, perfectly. To my teacher's ears, I was playing the song better than anyone else. But my fingers - and more importantly, my thoughts - were free to wander about as they wished.

When my teacher got to the student in front of me, I'd turn the recording off and start playing the song by hand again. My teacher would smile down at me, I'd grin back up at her, and she'd move on to the next student, thinking of how perfect a pupil I was.

And as soon as she was gone, I'd stop playing and turn the recording on again, leaning against the wall and looking out the window. I was monstrously pleased with myself, in love with my own cleverness. I thought I was so cool, able to outwit a grown-up like that.

I still feel like that sometimes, when I've skipped class 4 out of 6 times and still managed to get an A- on the test. I think, "What a clever thing I am! Tricking the whole world, evading the system. If they only knew what I know."

But then, I never did learn how to play the piano.