When I was in middle school in the eighties, my mom and I were big Hair Band fans. I had an acid-washed denim jacket nearly covered in Poison buttons that I bought at Musicland. Everyone at Brewer thought I was a little weird for that, I'm sure. I glued and taped magazine cutouts of heavy metal bands to my bedroom walls (yes, I said glued). I practiced drawing the Poison logo until I could do it just right, and I thought CC DeVille was the coolest person ever. I was going to be a guitarist in a famous rock band one day.

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My mom took me to my first concert -- I think it was somewhere in Columbia. Lita Ford and Cinderella opened up for Poison, if I remember correctly. When Poison took the stage, some blonde chick pushed past me and started head banging while holding up the rock on sign. All I could see was crimped blonde hair thrashing around. I turned to tell my mom to check this girl out, but my mom was gone – she was the one in front of me!

On the way back to the 240 ZX after the show, Mom was saying something to me, but I couldn’t understand. It sounded like we were underwater, and that was the first time I experienced the rock-concert-temporary-deafness thing.

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Looking back, one of the main themes of my childhood was the sense that money was always tight. I don’t resent that; it’s just the way it was, and it's a big part of who I am today. Going shopping was an extraordinary event. New toys were rare, which is something I wish my kids would appreciate.

So, in 1989, I received the shock of my life at my 12th birthday party. My friends and I were in my bedroom checking out the presents I just opened. All the adults were still in the kitchen, when I heard a sound coming from in there.

“There’s no way that is what I think it is,” I thought to myself.

I walked slowly down the hall towards the kitchen in a daze. There, in my kitchen, in my house, was one of my dad’s friends playing an electric guitar, and it was mine.

Understand that up to that point, I had never been within 150 feet of a guitar. Owning an electric guitar was something that was unattainable and absolutely out of the question. In my mind, it was the equivalent of my parents buying me a Lamborghini Countach.

But, there it was.

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I tried. I really tried to play it, but it was just too tough. I’m not creative, so I wasn’t about to write my own songs, and we couldn’t afford lessons. So, my guitar and dreams of being a rocker faded away. I know my parents must have been disappointed after spending their money on something like that for me, and I always felt bad about not learning how to play it.

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I kept the guitar all these years, thinking, "I'll learn how to play some day." So, after the Fall semester ended a couple of weeks ago, I learned the solo from one of my favorite songs.

Pink Floyd's song, Time, describes the way we perceive time as an infinite resource when we are young, but it passes increasingly faster and faster as we get older.

"Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain,
But you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you'll find, ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun."

So, this video is for my mom and dad. Here I am – with the very guitar that my parents gave me 20 years ago – playing the solo from Time.

Merry Christmas, and thanks for the guitar!




...and here is Pink Floyd's version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntm1YfehK7U

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