Any household with a piano quite likely has children more than willing to pound on the black and whites like so many Whack-A-Mole heads. Our house is no different. When my wife and I were married she brought with her an old Story & Clark upright, one that's found a comfortable home in the dining room. Come to think of it, the space below it MADE a comfortable home for a certain family of mice a while back, but that's another story.
Until recently the piano served its purpose as a dust collection device, a chotcke-holder, and occasionally a noisy racetrack for a Matchbox car or two. But one day Natalie announced she wanted to learn to play something on the piano. Hilary, being a bit rusty but somewhat learned in the pianistic arts, taught her a couple of nursery rhymes. Now, every spare moment, she rushes to the keyboard and practices the four tunes she knows. Her repertoire is simple, yet eclectic. She can play Happy Birthday, Twinkle Twinkle, Are you Sleeping Brother John, and....Billy Joel's Angry Young Man.
Okay, so she's not quite so polished with that last one, but I felt it necessary to play Angry Young Man for her one day after she proclaimed that she didn't need lessons, because she KNEW how to play the piano already. So rather than explain to her that there was more to learn, I felt compelled one day to put a little something by the Piano Man himself on the stereo to demonstrate.
Once the song was over, she dragged me to the piano to have me teach her.
Now, I know bupkis about piano playing, and I certainly ain't Billy Joel. But a long time ago someone showed me how to play the first few bars of AYM on the piano, and for some reason it stuck with me. So I showed her. And you know what? She's not bad. For some reason she's turned it into what sounds more like some sort of Broadway show tune, but it can clearly be defined as "music." Something tells me that with a few lessons, she's gonna be dangerous.
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