I remember sitting on the piano bench for hours. It must have been hours because I can still sing, "Porcupines have prickly quills. Don't go near their favorite hills. If you do you'll have bad luck. And you surely will get stuck." How could I possibly recall such a tune if it hadn't been relentless drilled into me as a child?
My mom made me practice piano 30 minutes a day. That was a horrible experience. As everyone who ever practiced piano knows, all children are universally bound by "The Inverse Law of Piano Happiness," which states, “The more a child hates practicing piano, the more each ‘minute’ spent sitting on the piano bench feels like ‘hours.’” By the time I was ten, I had played piano my entire life.
My mother must have been oblivious to the otherwise well-known "Inverse Law of Piano Happiness" because she made me sit alone on the piano bench and practice piano, day-after-day, for six years. I can't imagine how she must must have suffered during those 30 minutes of separation each day. I was alone but that meant she had to be alone too. Every day she made me practice, it meant she didn't have me at her side. What must it have been like for her to have a few minutes alone, with nothing but piano music filling our house? It must have been difficult for her.
Eventually, Mom faced the truth. Forcing me to sit alone on our piano bench (even if I was vigorously pounding the piano keys) simply wasn‘t turning me into a pianist.
The day came when Mom surrendered her role as my piano teacher and asked her friend Claire to take me as her student. (Of course, I never called her Claire. I always referred to her as “Mrs. DeVoe,” or “Ma’am,” because my parents promised me painful consequences if I spoke to an adult with an insolent tone or with disrespectful terms. My dad, who was big on discipline, meant it when he said: “Give honor where honor is due.” So I did.
We had no money so I assume my mother bartered with Claire for my lessons.
Mom threw out one of those, “I’ll teach all your kids to play piano if you'll just try to teach Mark.”
I didn’t learn to play Rachmaninoff. I didn't soar to the pinnacle of success as a concert pianist. But with Mrs. DeVoe’s help I learned a lot and still to this day I can go to a piano’s keyboard and find “Middle C” with almost no trouble at all.
Proverbs 29:15b - A child left undisciplined brings his mother to shame.
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