No Sh*t

- Rhapsody -

We're good with kids, my wife and I. Probably because we decided not to have any.

Our friend says her twins get excited whenever she tells them we're visiting.

I like the sister. She’s easy to be around.

The brother’s a handful. He reminds me of a time when I used to think the world revolved around me.

One time, we met up during a trip to Japan. We were having fun ... until we noticed people began to stare at us indirectly.

Guilty by association.

It all came to a head on a bus ride.

The parents and sister were sitting far away from the brother. We soon joined them after he kept ignoring our requests to please sit down and shut up.

He continued to run up and down the bus, shouting gleefully and hanging on the fixtures as if they were monkey bars.

Suddenly/Thankfully/Mercifully, this older Japanese man let out a barrage of words in his native tongue. The only English came at the end:

'SHEET DOWN!'

He sat down. He shut the hell up.

The man got out at the same stop as us. He came over and jabbed the kid, mumbling something in English.

I wished I could have told him he was mad at the wrong person.

• • •

I have a saying when it comes to teaching:

Never give up on a student.

Keeps my conscience clear now—just didn't know at what cost.

I didn't want to take on my student's brother. If they were alike, that would mean their love for piano lessons wouldn't be enough to get them to practice.

Since he was so young I said I would only accept him if he was carefully monitored and held accountable at home. But the thing about history is that it always repeats itself.

One of his favorite things to do, besides not practice, was to recite lines from all the YouTube ads he watched. My favorite was, My name is Derek Tran, please vote for me!

More or less, every lesson was like this for two years (i wasn't lying when i said i never gave up).

It wasn't a problem, except when I didn't get paid on time. But what I really took exception to was when the father kept asking me to waive the late fee instead of, you know, paying on time.

Once, he had the nerve to get upset when I calmly rejected his excuse and pointed out I had already waived his late fee on a previous occasion. He must have caught himself because the very next email he apologized by saying, 'Well, I guess I need to follow the rules.'

Yes, yes you do. That’s why they exist in the first place.

As a show of goodwill, I waived the late fee, forgetting, once again, that history repeats itself.

He must have smelled blood because he made a fuss over every subsequent late charge. So I just gave up, threw my hands in the air and waved them around because I no longer cared.

I only blamed myself—after all, I was the one who refused to cut the cord.

So when they finally decided to pull their kid out, it was one of the few times I felt relief.

'He just isn’t showing interest,' his mother said.

'Oh yes, yes, yesss I totally agree,' I replied, nodding and smiling like an idiot.

Secretly, I thought:

I could’ve told you that at the first lesson.

And:

Hallelujah.

• • •

The student introduced herself to me as the one I had been in contact with for the past few weeks. I think she was the treasurer of the college chapter of a music teacher organization that was sponsoring the event.

Something like that.

'We’re looking forward to your presentation!' she said.

My old professor, who had invited me, stood by my side. He asked if she would be sticking around for said presentation.

She hesitated briefly, then shook her head.

Strange that I would be talking on this stage where I had given so many performances before. Ironic because one of the reasons I became a piano major was to avoid speaking to people.

My former classmate had also been invited and he walked in a few minutes before it all began. I had a stack of note cards in my hands and asked him what he planned on talking about.

'Oh, I didn’t prepare anything!' he said. I was confused as to why he was so loud about it, like he was advertising this fact.

Nothing went according to plan, then again I don’t understand why I expected things to go any differently.

His tangents were without end. The piano majors, who comprised the majority of the audience, melted into their seats.

I glanced over at my old professor, as if to say, I thought you said you would be the referee for equality's sake, but he only looked down at his lap.

Finally, there was a pause and an awkward silence. He shattered it by saying, 'I feel like I’m dominating the conversation!'

This caused another awkward silence and I thought to myself, the correct word is 'monopolizing.'

After it was over, a faculty member was waiting to talk to me, his hands on his knees (he’s a tall guy). He held his mouth agape in an attempt to look friendly, but it only made his face look temptingly punchable.

He congratulated me, 'you have a thriving piano studio!'

I couldn’t let it land.

He didn’t ask me a single question during the presentation, instead directing all his attention to my classmate who owned a music studio with a full staff, in comparison to my own, smaller, private one.

Suddenly, I remembered how much I had disliked the guy when I was a student here.

Later, I walked down the halls to the parking lot and noticed the student who had skipped out was practicing inside one of the rooms. I saw a poster of her on the wall; she would be giving a recital soon.

I wasn’t mad at her because I would have done the same thing.

• • •

My wife is an accompanist at a college. She often shows me the emails she gets from the (much younger) students she works with, the ones who still get picked up by their parents after classes are over:

'Hi Lin, I forgot we had rehearsal.'
'hey kate, was that today?'
'Kate, I am SO SO sorry 4 forgetting!'
'hi, my clock was wrong i guess.'

She told what had happened at a recent jury (a final exam where the music student performs in front of a select faculty).

A student was late. The head of the department suggested waiting.

Ten minutes went by before someone recommended calling the student. He picked up, 'Oh, my alarm didn’t go off.'

They all continued to wait for him to show up.

He didn’t apologize after he arrived, played his instrument, and passed his exam.

Over dinner, I told my wife how no one had stayed after the talk to help my old professor clean up—save for me and another ex-classmate who now taught group piano there.

'What do you expect?' she said. 'That’s how this generation is these days.'

I said to myself:

No shit.

Where do you think they learned it from?