by Mona Yasir

Created on: January 17, 2009

Those magnificent black and white keys, that beautiful resonating sound, the mystery, the possibilities, the very word piano' has fascinated me since the first time I set eyes on one. When I was in middle school, we had a music teacher called Mr Hamlet. I thought his name was quite inappropriate since he looked more like Amadeus Mozart, with the fuzzy hair and everything. He was a musical genius and could play any instrument with apparent ease. He was also the fool who took it upon himself to try and teach a bunch of us tone-deaf, pubescent idiots, how to play the piano.

Isn't it strange how most people remember their piano teacher more vividly than how much they actually achieved during their lessons. I remember Mr Mozart, sorry I mean Mr Hamlet, trying in vain to teach us some sense of the written form of music first before showing us where those notes were on the instrument in question. But we were far too young to be patient enough for that. We wanted to get our slimy little fingers on those beckoning keys. We wanted to bash away and make some noise. We didn't care what all those silly dots on lines meant. The piano was a big toy and we wanted to play with it. And I think somewhere deep down inside, Mr Hamlet knew there was no hope for any of us who showed up every Thursday afternoon at lunch break to learn piano. But to his credit, he persevered with the determination of a great composer and finally managed to put into our simple minds an easy and quite satisfactory Three Blind Mice', which, to our credit, two of us could play in delayed unison. It was no symphony but we were all terribly proud of ourselves.

Mr Hamlet said we were wonderful and I soon found myself dreaming about the piano keys at home in my bed. My fingers would involuntarily move in the air as I tried to drift off to sleep. Fluttery black notes with funny little wings would fly around me in my dreams and the piano keys, millions and millions of them in unending rows like a giant staircase drifted off and away into the distance as I jumped on the black ones, the white ones, the black ones again, until the music was all I could hear. It was like delirium.

Yes, I was hooked, and I finally understood why Mr Hamlet's hair was like that.

It wasn't long before we could all play a decidedly slower version of Home On The Range', which our Head Teacher found so delightful, he decided we should perform in the school Christmas Show, much to our horror and dismay. Well that was enough to make Thursday lessons turn into Wednesday, Thursday, Friday lessons. "Practice makes perfect," said our music teacher. Yeah and public humiliation makes for years of therapy, man. But Mr Hamlet, with his enthusiasm and good cheer, led us all out onto the stage two weeks before Christmas and to our parent's utter amazement, we delivered a simple children's tune which to us sounded like a complicated overture.

I wish the video camera had been invented then. I would have loved to see that performance in replay. My kids would probably fracture a rib or two making fun of me as they rolled around on the floor in tears of laughter. But you should have seen us, in our black bow ties, with our hair greased back, our fingers poised, our expressions as serious as a brain surgeon's. We were little Mozarts, who never really learned how to play the piano, but had a great time trying.

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