Amy's way or the highway

Guitar teacher speaks

"We show up in Ensenada, Mexico and this guy greets us with a cosco apple juice sized jug of tequila-good tequila. Then he takes out as bowl of grasshoppers, grasshopper flavored. Fried, I think. I could almost have done it, except for the legs."

Guitar Revisited

Finally. That thing I put down at five-years old, I picked back up.
My guitar. Not the same one. That's too small now. It got sold at a rummage sale in '78 for 2.50.
This guitar belonged to a guy who came in and out of my life for years. It's a classical, so the neck is too thick. His wasn't. His neck was thin. He was as white as a princess. We never fell in love with each other at the same time, an ailment I've remedied. Vapor Rub.
A friend suggested the class. This post-thirty version of myself is obligated to try anything. Yes, I now say, instead of No. No is allowed later, but not initially. My guitar is held together with duct tape, which is only funny because the ex-owner's brother had an Italian motorcycle also held together with duct tape. Irish men don't look tough, but they are. They ride on highways with faith in the strength of duct tape. They carry around beautiful classical guitars held together with duct tape. The sound still comes out of the instrument. The motorcycle still makes it from LaSalle Street to South Shore Drive. At twenty, when this guitar was bestowed upon me, I wasn't brave. I cuddled up to brave. I basked in brave.
Well, the guitar makes my thumb cramp.
I tell my mom, who's tomb will one day read "Had solutions.". She's got a guitar, a convertible. Rare. She'd prefer I use the nylon strings. I can't have it, she qualifies, but it needs to be played. I can't have it because she hasn't given up on the dream that she'll play someday.
And why shouldn't she? When I was five, I had one guitar lesson. In that lesson, I dreamed the entire dream. I saw the stage. I saw me on it. My crowd leaning into me, screaming my name, humming my tunes. There's a bit of weeping in the audience, but it doesn;t embarass me. I get it. I'm being divinely passed thorugh. And then I put the instrument down, and then thirty years later, I picked it back up. Because I am brave. Because on the other side of twenty, I say yes.