GUITAR.

I went to the music store fully bent on getting myself a ukulele [Julia Nunes inspires me, not because they’re trendy and cute]. But they only had crappy $40 ones with kitschy frogs on them [more on that in the video below].

So I started looking at the amateur guitars, all of which started at $90...rough. The friendly salesboys (who all seemed to have mastered the musician hairflip) kept pushing the Union Jack electric guitar that I admittedly drooled over when I first walked in the store BUT I stuck firmly to my price range. One of them remembered a mini guitar (travel guitar? guitarlet?) that was brought in just today, because some dude died and it got sent to their store [SCORE!]. It was used and therefore ON SALE!

I’ll take it, I said, without having even seen it.

Don’t you want to play it first?, asked a salesboy.

Oh, I don’t play guitar...

He raised one eyebrow.

And my knowledge of guitars is embarrassing at best, but I want to start, I said, with my most winning smile.

So he offered me a free lesson next Sunday at 1:00 and I got two free picks out of it, a blue one and a red one.

Superman colors, I said.

He smiled widely and offered a mini lesson right then and there.

Okay, why not?

What’s your name?

Katrina, what’s yours?

Sam.

Of course.

They have extremely creepy backrooms for lessons. As soon as he took a good look at my hands, he cleared his throat.

Uh, first lesson. You gotta cut your nails.

I tried to pluck some strings to no avail.

Yeah, I know. They’re nasty.

This’ll be a little harder than I thought, he said.

I could bite them off. Give me two minutes.

And so I did, which didn’t gross him out as much as it should have. I learned an A chord and he promised to teach me a basic version of a Vampire Weekend song on Sunday! Today I taught myself part of Stand by Me, part of Little Boxes (from Weeds), and part of La Bamba. I also am now acutely aware that I have quite a fat ring fingerpad, which makes the C chord unbearable. Feel free to laugh at my struggles below.