idk...i was bored so i decided to post an essay i wrote a year ago
My Theme
When I turned seven, I remember getting a flyer from school for piano lessons, and I decided I wanted to play, since music was my favorite thing. My mom enrolled me into Paolo Music Studio, ‘the most progressive music school in New England’. I was told I would be on an eight week trial to see if I had the ability to play piano. I started out with an instrument I had never seen before. It was like wearing a backpack backwards that was loaded with books. I had no idea this was the instrument I would be playing for the next six years.
The eight week trial went by very leisurely. Seeing as this was my first time playing an instrument, it was hard for me to understand most of the terms. I made a lot of mistakes and was very inaccurate with my playing; nevertheless, my music teacher, Bob Paolo, who was stricter than a nun in a Catholic school, would yell. On the rides home, I would always tell my mom that I wanted to quit and I didn’t understand why he would yell so much, she told me if that was really what I wanted to do then, to do it. Something made me go back the next week and the week after, to show Bob I could do this, to show myself I could do it.
“You missed one day of practice and you’re doing this bad? Miss two, and might as well sell your accordion!” Bob (sarcastically) replied, at my weekly practice, six years later. Because of my busy schedule, I don’t get to practice as often as I like, but it’s usually enough to please Bob, and myself. Every practice I go to, Bob always says I have talent. All I have to do is work a little harder to be up there with the “big guys”, which are the students who’ve proved to be, musical prodigies. I’m usually shy in front of large crowds of people, but when I play my accordion, as feel as if my music speaks for itself.
Every April, there’s a competition at the Marriott hotel in Newton, Massachusetts. April has been my favorite month from the time when I started playing accordion. It’s hard to explain what a great feeling it is to spend time in a place where everyone shares the same interest: music. We, the Paolo Music Studio, have always been a threat to the other music schools because we’re always taking home the first place trophies. Many people, even from other studios, tell us that someone who’s played with Bob for two years could easily beat someone playing for five years in any other studio. We’re the smallest studio at the competition; most the other studios have at least 200 to 300 students, whereas Bob’s studio has about 40, at most. Nearly all the studios are large extravagant music schools, while Paolo’s Music Studio is a room in the basement of Bob’s house, but I guess it doesn’t matter where you practice; it’s just how you practice. Bob has taught us every thing we know. Our studio and Rosita Lee Music School reminds me a bit of the Red Sox and Yankees rivals. If we don’t win first they do and vice versa. Not only is the competition fun, but I get to hang out with my friends I rarely get to see.
It’s been six years and the accordion, the first and only instrument I’ve ever played; it has brought so much satisfaction to me. In the past six years of playing I figured out Bob was disciplining me for my own good. Although most people thought the accordion was an instrument left in the shadows like, for example, the tuba (when’s the last time you saw one of those?!) the accordion means the world to me. “In the last 15 years the accordion has literally gone from one of the most unpopular instruments of all time to being the ultimate fashion statement of the ’90s. Everybody wants one!”-anonymous. Even though that may not be completely true, I know that the accordion is making a renaissance. It’s been six years and I haven’t had a piano lesson in my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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