A story and a plan. {Part One of the Piano makeover}

Have I ever told you the story about five-year-old-conniving-me and the piano debacle??

Nope? 

Well then you have missed out.

Don’t worry about it though, my parents missed out too. They really should have seen my full potential from this story, but the only thing they saw was an opportunity to ground me and teach me an important lesson. 😉

#wellplayed

#almostaconartist

 

You see, when I was five years old I had to take piano lessons. That half an hour of practicing after school each day felt like an eternity, so, I took matters into my own little girl hands. 

I started by hatching an epic plan in my little mind, I thought of my plan over and over and tweaked it to perfection.

 Then one day, I got to work right away tape recording myself playing my dreaded piano lessons on my handy dandy tape recorder (NOTE: Babies born after 1990 may have to Google what that is. ) After I had clunked through my half hour lesson and successfully tape recorded it, I waited for the following day to put my plan into motion. 

Just as I had pictured, over and over in my scheming imagination, I dragged my big-life-like-doll from its special spot in the corner of my bedroom, and exchanged her polka dotted dress with the one I had worn to school that day. I squished and pulled my dolls soft arms and legs through my outfit, complete with the ketchup stain, until she looked just like me – lopsided pigtails and all.  

I stood back and took my dolly in. 

She was about three and a half feet tall and exactly what I had wanted for Christmas the year before. My older sister and I had spotted these giant stuffed dolls and became obsessed with the fact that they weren’t “baby” dolls, no, they were just like us and as big as us, and we immediately focused our attention on bossing them around instead of each other. (Bonus, they never talked back and always played all the terrible “boy parts” in our imaginary stories. Every little girls dream come true. Boys have cooties don’t ya know, and life as you know it is over if you have to play the “boy” in any story. Yuck.)

I held my doll up with both arms and marveled at my own genius with this plan. I then tucked my portable tape recorder under my arm and set the scene in our families dining room.

Our upright piano was big and brown and bo0000rrrrrrring. 

Finally, it would see some excitement.

I felt like it should high five me or something.

I plunked my life size doll, clad in my very own dress, onto the slippery piano bench and propped her stuffed hands “just so” along the black and white keys. Her head drooped a little and her hair hung around her face, but the effect seemed to make the setup look very life like to me. I never was one that sat upright on that slippery bench,and just like dolly, I remembered to show my parents, with the important drama of a five year old girl, that music lessons were so boring that they did in fact make allll the muscles in my body turn to mush. My giant dolly was nailing her part in this plan.

I stepped away, viewing the bored senseless dolly, and pressed PLAY on my tape recorder.

I remember thinking, I wish I had of thought of this sooner.

Then, with that off tune plunking music coming from the speakers of my beloved crackling tape recorder, I swooshed out to the street, hopped on my little bike and zoomed around the block half  a dozen times until I heard my mothers tell-tale-angry-voice hollering my name from our kitchen window.

Ok, so now you know that I was a child prodigy. or perhaps a budding mass-manipulator, but whatever the case, my grounding shook some “respect” into me and I never did cunningly escape another piano lesson.