Faced With Inadequacy
We all have things that either we can’t do well or do at all. Nobody is good at everything. Still we can’t help but feel inadequate at times. Maybe you can’t dance. Maybe you don’t have a green thumb. Maybe you’re not a good public speaker. I’m not good at any of those things. But, I can avoid all that. It’s the inadequacies that you’re faced with every day that gnaw at me. Like the piano. I can’t play the piano.
You’d think I could avoid that, too. But I can’t. My grandmother has a piano. An old upright sits in the livingroom that I walk by everyday, that I dust every week. And it serves as a constant reminder that I can’t do much more with it than look at it and dust it. It hasn’t been tuned in years, but still I have to face that piano and know that I can’t play it.
When I moved in with my grandmother at age 14, she’d tried to get me to learn to play. She used to try to convince me by telling me that women were very impressed by men who could play the piano. (Little did she know that impressing women would not become a goal in adult life for me.) But I was more focused on impressing women by becoming an NBA star. Girls were definitely impressed by basketball players. (I was still a few years away from discovering the pleasures of guy on guy. I was a late bloomer in that sense.)
So I plunked away basic exercises on the piano from time to time, but never gave it any real effort. And now I regret it. Not because I never made it to the NBA. It wasn’t like it was an either/or situation, NBA superstar or world-class concert pianist. I just wish that I had learned to play. I have been told by people who do play that I would have been good becuase I have big hands and can stretch across the keyboard. But, I don’t know. I don’t have any other signs of musician-ship. I can’t sing. I can’t don’t really have rhythm (that I know from my attempts at dancing). So, I might have spent all those years practicing only to not really be good at the piano either. Or maybe it would have been like basketball. I wa sgood. Really good. Just not quite good enough.
My granny will still play every once in a while, and it’s nice to sit with her on the bench and just listen or have her try to teach me to play the left hand of whatever she’s playing. While it’s fun at the time, afterwards it just reminds of what I could have done.
Who knows? Maybe I could have impressed some guy with my piano skills.
February 28th, 2005 at 9:28 am
Inadequacy I think is a little harsh for the title of this article. From reading this and other of your articles, you appear to be kind, considerate, caring and have a rare talent of observation.
If you were to lack in these attributes your article is aptly titled. Piano playing, jiving, singing and french are the first disciplines I would love to experience. So, rename your article ‘Grasping New Experiences’.
As a pianist you would certainly have impressed me. Let me know when you want to tinkle some ivory?
August 16th, 2005 at 9:06 pm
Your thirty, life aint over yet! My old man brought me up to believe no one would piss in my mouth if my guts were on fire, I always hoped he was right, not really into water sports, and that I would never amount to squat. He was mistaken, However after six years in Military, and twelve working for fortune 500’s I’m throwing it all away to go back to school and do it all over again. The only thing holding me back on any given day is ME.