Zig Zig

I have this contrarian streak. Unlike most contrarians, who say that proudly, I say it as a confession because my contrarianism is a sign of weakness, not strength.

When everyone zigs, I instinctively zag, not so much because I pride myself on walking my own path, but because I’m afflicted with the ability to feel both insecure and too secure at the same time. My insecure side assumes I’m already too late to get in on the action, surely others are doing whatever it is much better than I can, no point in even trying, just wish I’d thought of it first, while my over secure side assumes I know better than the masses, my way must be superior for I am unique and special, not just another face in the crowd.

So I don’t trust my contrarianism, but it’s still a struggle for me to zig when you zig. This has kept me from walking a lot of sensible paths in my life, their sensibility obvious at the time to anyone who could see with unclouded eyes that everyone else was walking them too. Sure, sometimes people are lemmings, and in those rare instances it doesn’t pay to follow them off a cliff, but most of the time most of the people get it mostly right. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. We humans are, after all, massively more alike than different. If what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, why isn’t it just as good for all the other geese and ganders?

I’m so smart, it took me only 40 years to realize this. And still I resist!

Example: A few months ago my wife was worried. All the kids were taking piano lessons except ours. This of course meant to her that our kids must, therefore, take piano lessons too and to me that they must, therefore, not.

My insecure side worried my kids had already fallen too far behind as I imagined their early-adopting friends effortlessly playing rings around them at recital after recital.

My oversecure side figured there must be something wrong with the piano if everyone is playing it, it’s too common for my special and unique children, so maybe instead my son should study the kalimba and my daughter the torch song and someday one of those kids pounding away at piano lessons will be lucky to earn the honor of accompanying my children’s performance, the piano discretely tucked away at the back of the stage far from the spotlights with the mike turned way down so as not to distract from my little star attractions.

But when I resisted, she said our kids were falling behind. Falling behind what? The College Quest, of course. The goal of parenting used to be simple: raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted laborers for your farm. Now it’s even simpler: just get them into the Right College.

Parents playing the College Quest leave nothing unscheduled or unstructured. Childhood can wait for adulthood, they seem to think, as they shuttle junior off to another enrichment class, complain he doesn’t get enough homework, sign him up for double sessions at Kumon, secretly hire a private tutor on the side, suit him up for at least one sport chosen from a list of Common College Varsity Sports No One Plays So Even the Mediocre Can Get a Scholarship or at Least Earn Some Extra Admissions Points, and, of course, carefully concoct a community service project demonstrating junior’s dedication to the underprivileged, those pathetic losers with parents who didn’t care enough to coach them in the College Quest.

I understand that most people my kids are likely to run into in life will have played or be playing the College Quest, and therefore most people will judge my kids by their success in the College Quest, so if my kids don’t play the College Quest because their contrarian dad refused to let them, even if he was right to do so, it will hurt them later. But, being a contrarian, I must reject the College Quest and all its insidious manifestations, including mandatory piano lessons.

I spend a lot of time thinking of ways around the College Quest. If we were independently wealthy, it wouldn’t matter. If my kids were freakishly talented at something remunerable, such as throwing an unhittable slider, it wouldn’t matter. If we owned a cushy family business they could join, it wouldn’t matter. If they wanted to pursue a career in fast food or farm labor, it wouldn’t matter.

While I was mulling this over, my kids started taking piano lessons. They took to the piano like, well, kids who really like piano. It’s as if they were born to play. We couldn’t pry them away. They spent all their free time playing. They’d eat and sleep at the piano if we left them. And even when they were eating at the table, they’d be fingering the songs they’d play when they were done.

And they were good, at least to my ear and the piano teacher’s ear, neither ear unbiased, of course. Not that I was comparing them to other competitors in the College Quest, no, nothing as prosaic as that. This is about sheer unadulterated joy, not a line on a college application.

After a couple of months of undiminished enthusiasm and unchecked progress, we bought a grand piano.

Grand pianos are very expensive. So expensive I justified the purchase in part by telling myself I would learn to play, so if my kids ever dump the piano for a new enthusiasm, at least someone in the house would still be playing the damn thing.

So, one morning soon after, when I was alone in the house, I sidled over to said piano, opened their Alfred’s Lesson Book 1B, found middle C and started to play.

After a minute or two I noticed the clock bonging noon in the hallway. Two hours had passed. I spent another few minutes playing until it got dark and everyone came home and I had to clean up for dinner. At the table I caught myself fingering the songs I’d just been working on.

It’s been a month and my interest has only deepened. I’m scratching an itch I never knew I had. I bought every piano lesson book I could find. I love learning new techniques. I love learning new songs. I love playing old songs, and replaying them, and replaying them some more. I can’t seem to get enough of any of it. It’s as if the piano emits an invisible, odorless and highly addictive gas each time I depress a key. No wonder everyone plays it, there’s a reason it’s so common.

The piano follows me everywhere. When I’m not fingering pieces on my desk, I’m playing them on my mental keyboard. I no longer listen to music; I deconstruct it, trying to figure out how I’d play it on the piano.

I think I’m good, though I’m probably not, but part of the fun is to assume I’m a prodigy, albeit one who got a late late start and still has so much to learn. This gives me the confidence to tackle any piece, to push on even as I flail around, for I have this gift that can no longer be contained. I cannot give up.

A more plausible explanation is that a lifetime of touch typing at 80+ wpm was, in fact, a lifetime of practice for piano, my fingers conditioned over the years into finely-toned key striking machines, able to touch type any tune, only now with a dash of con molto sentimento thrown in as needed.

I sometimes wonder what would’ve happened if my parents had introduced me to the piano when I was a kid. Would it have consumed me then, as it consumes me now? Would it have led me to a different path through life? And as my kids continue to immerse themselves deeper and deeper into everything piano, I can’t help but think that none of this would’ve happened if we’d heeded my contrarian instincts.

Thankfully, no one listens to me.