Trying New Things

The "Year of Writing Dangerously" is supposed to be about more than just writing. This sabbatical is also supposed to be about learning new things, pursuing some entrepreneurial ideas, social networking, etc. So in that vein, I have decided to try to learn to play the guitar.

My brother bought an electric guitar a few years ago to try to learn. Mostly it's just been gathering dust in his old room. So I asked him if I could borrow it for a while, to mess around and see if I could learn enough to fake a couple of songs. He said sure and loaned me the guitar, amp, books and all the accessories. (Including headphones so I don't have to torture anyone but myself.)

You have to understand that I believe somewhere inside of me is a prodigy. A prodigy doing what, we may never know, hence the constant exploration. (You can still be a prodigy in your thirties, can't you?) I love art but can't draw a stick figure to save my life. Painting watercolors is a secret desire but the lack of artistic talent keeps holding me back, drat it. Music is the same way. I would love, love, LOVE to play an instrument but lack a fundamental, oh, say, musical ability.

Oh, I've tried to be a musician. I loved playing the Flute-a-Phone in elementary school. I wasn't good at it, possibly because it required hand-eye coordination. (Hence the reason I'm also not a good athlete.) And the ability to read music is almost completely beyond me, much like trigonometry - which I passed with a B, thank you, and then promptly pushed out of my brain so that I would have room to remember things like "What was the name of the family Charles worked for on the first season of Charles in Charge?" (Answer: Pembroke, the Powell's came later when the show moved to syndication.) Reading music is like a foreign language that you must learn by the age of two to fully understand, I think. I once dated a bass player who tried to explain the 'circle of fifths' or something like that and I thought he had been taken over by pod people. He was speaking gibberish, and I secretly think he made it all up.

I tried the keyboard a couple of times. We never had a piano but my parents bought one of those little Casio keyboards for us kids in the 80's and I fooled around with it a bunch. I bought a larger keyboard later thinking I would teach myself to play piano and learned to play two Christmas carols then promptly set the keyboard in a corner and then forgot about it completely. I have a sneaking suspicion that the only instruments I can really "play" are peripheral percussion instruments like the shaker, the cowbell and the triangle. I'd add the tambourine but that may be too technically advanced for me.

So now I embark on a journey of guitar. Who knows where it will lead. I have never even played "Guitar Hero" so I maybe brilliant at it, a genius talent waiting to break free. Soon I may be touring with a rock bank, with roadies doing all the heavy lifting for me and groupies just waiting for their chance to spend time in my presence. It'll be cool to retire and just play Vegas. Or, perhaps, this guitar will just sit in my room, waiting to be covered in new dust, as I become frustrated once again with my complete and utter lack of talent. Only time will tell.

Wii and the Pathetically Unathletic

Okay, so I got a Wii for my family for Christmas. Yes, I stood in line early one cold December morning in hopes of scoring one of these video game systems, after even thinking about buying a black market Wii at double the price.

Why? I'm not a video game person by nature. Sure, we had Pong whan I was a kid but that was no more than an animated Etch-a-Sketch really and my bouts of playing were pretty short, as Barbie's life was far more interesting (some day I'll post about why Barbie is the reason I became a writer). Sure, I played Ms. Pac Man like all of my friends, since I was a child of the 80's, but I was never a high score, as most of the time I heard that blooping sound as Ms. Pac Man was eaten by the ghosts. So why was I so obsessed with obtaining the Wii? Because I heard it was a video game system for the video game retarded like me.

Families could use the Wii, not just the shaggy-haired video game obsessed teenage sons, hunched over their controllers furiously killing assorted, aliens/terrorists/cops/whatever or battling orks/elves/hobbits/whatever in the modern day version of Dungeons and Dragons. (Geek that I was, I never got into DnD, but I watched my brother play and it always seemed too complicated with their many sided dice, graph paper, thick books and folders of character information). Older people in nursing homes were using Wiis, I figured, why not me?

So we began playing Wii as a family. My brother and his fiancee had used the Wii at other peoples homes so they became our guides. We played for hours on New Years Eve for hours and every Sunday since. My mother can kick our butts in bowling and she's pretty good at golf too (she's not so good at tennis, she still tries to play during the replays too.) My grandma likes the bowling although we had to make a few modifications for her 87 years (she holds the Wii remote upside down to make it easier) and my brother and I are pretty competitive at tennis.

Now I am athletically challenged (the PC term for spazz). But in my mind's eye I'm athletic. I can always imagine that one day I'll suddenly enjoy exercise, that perhaps it's just a matter of finding the right sport. We had tennis rackets as kids and while I could never actually play tennis, I was really good at serving the ball not just over the net but over the high fence surrounding the court as well. (In baseball this would be considered a home run but in tennis it's frowned upon). I had my parents buy me a football and a basketball one Christmas (they were shocked when their chubby little bookworm daughter wanted athletic gear as a present but, bless them, they got them for me) I was convinced that all I need to become athletic was a little practice. So I would take my balls over to the schoolyard and practice in secret, knowing that one day the moment would arise when I could show off my athletic prowess and impress all of my teammates. After all, that's how it works in movies, right, the nerdy little kid catches the winning touchdown or shoots the winning basket in the last second of the game? But I could only make a basket by 'grannying' the ball (holding the ball with both hands between your legs then thrusting them forwards, hoping it would arc towards the basket and not end up behind you) but since this move is time consuming and embarrassing (and never used in the NBA) I never made that glorious shot. I might have made a winning catch in football, had anyone ever thrown the ball even vaguely in my direction but knowing me, I probably would have just ducked to avoid it. So I was always the last kid picked for teams (except once, and David Newton will be my hero forever and ever) and I never did find a sport I can excel in.

But then along comes the Wii. You create your own character (a Mii) that looks like you (mine even has my double chin) and you play a variety of games - tennis, baseball, bowling, boxing and golf. And with a little practice I have become marginally competent. And for me, marginal competence is the equivalent of Olympic level excellence. I can now play tennis and actually volley the ball for more than ten seconds. I have broken the score of 100 in bowling (something I have yet to achieve in the real world) and I can shoot for par on a nine hole course. Best of all, my Wii age has come down from sixty-eight to twenty-seven! The Wii has given me back my mind's eye vision of myself as an athlete. When I'm playing Wii, I'm Maria Sharipova or Tiger Woods or some dude who's the top guy in bowling. (His name is probably Herb, but I don't know that for sure, which goes to show you how little respect the sport of competitive bowling gets). And I don't even have to go out in the heat, or put on rented shoes, or lug a heavy bag of clubs around. You can do it in your air conditioned living room in your underwear if you want (not that I do that). And you can impress your family that, at last, you don't suck quite so bad.

Next I want to get Guitar Hero for my Wii. After playing Wii sports, I suspect that if I get Guitar Hero I may be something of a musical genius and destined to become a rock star. Which would be quite an accomplishment for a girl who couldn't even play the Flute-a-Phone in elementary school.