Teara took piano lessons when we were kids, so naturally, I wanted to take piano lessons too.

My parents bought a piano and put it in our living room. It was a light brown upright with a black leather bench seat that flipped up so we could store music sheets in it. I don’t know if all piano benches are like that, but since secret compartments make me oddly excited, it’s what I loved most about it.

Lol completed the look by painting a Beethoven bust in her ceramics class and placing it on the top right corner of the piano.

I’m sure she felt all kinds of classy with her Beethoven art, but for us kids it was straight terror.

Beethoven doesn’t look like the happiest guy around. I mean, I don’t blame him – if the best thing I had going for me was my music and then I went deaf, I’d be pretty pissed off too.

I’m sure all the other composers were really jealous of Beethoven and were like, “Ha! Try being a musical genius now that you’re deaf!” And Beethoven was like, “Haha Fuck you. I’m deaf and still a better composer than you.” Then he made Für Elise to really stick it to them.

I’m totally going off on a tangent here, but Teara could play Für Elise – permed head swaying to the music as she tickled the ivories. It was really impressive until you realized she just kept playing the same bar over and over again. That’s all she knew. Not so impressive after that.

I shouldn’t judge because the only thing I could play was The Snake Dance. My song had words though. I could play and sing at the same time – I’d say that’s pretty impressive. It went like this:

🎶 There’s a place in France where the naked ladies dance…

There’s a hole in the wall where the children see it all…

And the men don’t care ‘cause they don’t wear underwear…” 🎶

I feel like I might have made the words up. I’m not sure. It was a long time ago.

Back to the frightening Beethoven bust. You have to remember that busts don’t have arms, so it basically looked like a floating head. Every day we had to walk past this armless, floating Beethoven head that looked like it was staring straight into our souls.

As an adult reading this, I’m sure you think I’m exaggerating, but ask any of my friends how they felt about the Beethoven head and you’d get the same response.

I very clearly remember locking arms with my BFF Christine at the top of the stairs, squeezing our eyes shut and running past the living room of my split level colonial so that we wouldn’t catch Beethoven’s eyes and be damned to Hell.

Anyhoo, Teara and I took piano lessons from an older woman named Mrs. Spiro. Mrs. Spiro also taught some of our friends.

I remember going to her fancy apartment that I think may have smelled like Chanel No. 5, but I was only 8 or 9 so I can’t say for sure. She had a big, black baby grand and she would sit on my right side as she taught.

I heard that Mrs. Spiro fell asleep once during a lesson and scared the shit out of our friend Erica. She started shaking her by the arm pleading, “Please don’t be dead Mrs. Spiro! Please don’t be dead!”

She wasn’t dead, thank God, but I’d imagine this was quite traumatizing for Erica.

This is all I remember about piano because I quit after a year. It was boring as shit and I wasn’t very good.

Teara stuck with it for a while but I think that bar from Für Elise is still the only thing she knows how to play.

The other things I tried but quit after a month or so are as follows:

gymnastics, dancing school, the library summer reading club – among other things.

People are so conditioned to think that quitting is a bad thing. I appreciate that Lol let me quit. I would’ve just wasted all that time doing something I hated. Let’s be honest, I wasn’t going to be the next Beethoven, or my idol Nadia Comaneci, or Debbie Allen. And I didn’t care about beating the other nerds like Teara on the sticker chart at the library.

Instead I spent my free time playing Barbies with Christine and going in the pool and playing hide and seek and riding my bike and making up games and having the best childhood ever without my parents forcing me to do things that made me miserable.

PJ and I agree with this parenting style. If my kids don’t like doing something that’s meant to be fun, I let them quit. (Except if it has an adverse effect on on a team, then they have to stick it out for the season.)

We’re all about chillin’ and enjoying our free time and discovering the things we really enjoy.

PJ, talking about when he was a kid, says he had the best summers playing in the pool with his BFF Donnie … until he was forced to stop for clarinet lessons with his teacher Mr. Becker. My favorite part is when he recalls telling Donnie, “I gotta go, Mr. Pecker is here for my clarinet lesson.” 🤣

Guess what… PJ isn’t a concert clarinetist. He doesn’t even play anymore. But he’ll never forget having to interrupt his fun childhood memory for something he hated.

I still don’t read books but I’ve been listening to one after another lately. Am I allowed to give myself stickers if I’m just listening and not actually reading? If so, I’d blow Teara away on that sticker chart.

Ok, so this was a subtle “soap-boxy” blog post this time around, I’ll get off it now. But I’d like to conclude with this:

We only have one life here on this earth (I think), and it is short. Childhood is even shorter. Don’t force your kids to do things they hate! Let them be kids!!