SHE ruined EVERYTHING.

SHE was not a girl I loved, or liked. SHE was not someone I knew personally. And most importantly, SHE ruined everything.

It starts like this. A boy (me) finds interest in an instrument that his parents aren't really forcing him to play. The more accurate term would be "nudging"; they were "nudging" me. So this boy plays for fun, follows along the instructional CD, and even begins to learn songs by ear. Call it natural if you may, but I really liked it. Then this WOMAN comes marching into my house every Thursday at 4:00 demanding more practice. Then the parents would demand practice, not satisfied by how much they were paying her. Not only that, but in retrospect, she was a horrible teacher. You'd think that with that much yelling some of it was for good. I'd have to say no.

Instead of teaching me the chromatic scale and all other related necessities in western music, she taught me that certain dots on the graph with 5 lines represented a finger I should hold down on my violin. This was already a plan for failure. Three Suzuki books in and I still wasn't capable of reading music. All I knew were fingers 1, 2, 3, 4 and occasionally 5, my pinky finger. Damn that woman. Really. Except the few times when she would scream G-STRING and me and my brother would just laugh because she said G-string, as in man thong. Besides that, she ruined it.

The overjustification effect in full effect I started to hate violin and violins in general. If dreams of burning violins isn't a sign of animosity, then I don't know what is. It's simple, force a kid to do something he already likes to do and he will slowly(or quickly) begin to hate it. Yes, even eating ice cream.

SHE came in to my life and blacked out music for 5 years, just like my high school language arts teachers turned reading into taboo. She didn't even teach me any music theory that I could accidentally recall now and then. Just 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And here I am now desperately trying to make sense of the circle of fifths and pentatonic and diatonic scales.

I'm not regretful. Just mad. Age 17, it's not too late. Maybe I'll come out of the smoke victorious. Maybe I'll show this woman how much she sucked and become another worthless loser. Either way, when I have a kid, I'll nudge him to play some instruments. Then get him some worthless teachers. Then let him rinse and repeat on his own kin. Yea right.