by Sylvie DeVaux

Created on: July 14, 2009

Twice a week for two years I pounded away on an upright piano in the corner of Mrs. Grobenstein's parlor and hated every hour of spending time with her and it. Don't get me wrong, the idea of learning an instrument thrilled me. I thought it'd be the coolest thing ever.

I begged my parents for months to pay for instrument lessons. Stringed instruments: No, beginners always screech, that never sounds like music. Tuba: too big. Flute: no teacher. Clarinet: too nasal. Trumpet: too loud. After all these suggestions, what was left? Piano.

(Well if my parents had wanted to drive me an hour out of town I could have learned how to play the mandolin, I guess. But how was I to incorporate that into school?)

So piano. I was excited at first. I mean, look at Mozart and Beethoven, they played brilliantly. I wanted to be like them. (Okay, so I was a little old to be a prodigy like Mozart, but hey, everyone has to dream!) I wanted to be able to let my fingers fly across the keys and pour out beautiful music that touched people's souls.

Enter Mrs. Grobenstein. Ever seen Julia Child? With her fly-away hair and dowager's hump, but she still manages to look like the nicest grandma ever? This was NOT my teacher. Take the hair and the hump, add in long skirts of one type of floral pattern, long sleeved shirts of another non-complementary pattern (and they were always long-sleeved, no matter what the temperature), huge bumpy knuckles, a nose that would put Pinocchio to shame, and a voice that that made you either want to pee yourself in fear or burst your ear drums with a red hot poker (besides having a very thick German accent). This was Mrs. Grobenstein. Oh, and she smelled... odd... too, kind of a cross between rotten eggs and dirty cat litter, even though she didn't own a cat or any other pets (I think she probably would have eaten them). She should've had green skin; it would have made more sense.

First lessons: identifying keys, learning scales, and learning to read music. Yes, those little circles and lines on a page actually mean something. Amazing to think about, really. Being forgetful or not practicing at home was NOT an option. Mrs. Grobenstein loved her yardstick and she had a perfect ear. You couldn't bluff around her, she knew, somehow she always knew if you missed even a half hour of practice in-between lessons.

To put it plainly, the woman terrified me. She wasn't very big, barely taller than me when I started and I towered over her by a foot when I declared

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