Playing With The King Of Hearts

Thursday, March 6, 2008

One night each week, Megan and I take a group beginning guitar lesson at a nearby middle school. The class is a veritable orgy of bad tuning and muted bar chords. But bad as the students are, the instructors hair is worse. At least I assume the hair is his, unless he's still making payments on it.

Bad toupee aside, he's an excellent teacher and I've been surprised how successfully I've learned the fundamentals. I've really picked up a lot of cool stuff and I'm a little bummed that next week is the last class in the course. So after class, I stopped to chat with the teacher about the details of the intermediate course for a couple minutes while a few other students milled around waiting to get a little one-on-one time before the next class shuffled in.

One of those other students who lingered after class was the mousy redhead who always sits in the back. I've never talked to her before but she usually comes in just as class is starting and sometimes flashes a hello smile as she takes her seat across the room. Tonight, she finished her business with the teacher at the same time I got my guitar packed in its case and we both headed towards the parking lot where Donna and Megan were waiting in the car and where, I presume, her car was parked too.

"So, are you getting the hang of it? The guitar?" I figured that making some small talk might be less awkward than walking all the way out without even saying a word.

"I think so. I'm really bad at practicing though. I usually forget to take it out of the trunk."

"Are you going to take the intermediate class?"

"I dunno. I may be out of town several weeks over the next couple months so I'd probably miss a bunch of the classes."

"I see. Well I'm really looking forward to it." There wasn't much else to say about it. Small talk is what it is.

"I'm Vanessa, by the way."

"Oh. I'm Pete."

"And the girl you bring to class? She's your... sister?"

Vanessa said this as if to both ask and answer. I realized as she asked it that she was asking more than she was asking. She said "sister" more like she was saying "not your daughter?"

"No. Megan is my daughter. She's 13."

I said this as if to say, "I'm not single and I'm probably a lot older than you think."

Her face fell. "Oh... I see." I sensed that she had possibly waited for a moment that she could talk to me and that this is not how she had thought it would go.

Oh... Now I see too. Awkward.

Of course, it was not that big a deal and she didn't really risk anything in asking. In fact, she probably hasn't given it much of a second thought. But I can't say it didn't feel really, really good just to have this pleasant, nice-looking girl take enough interest to go out on a limb and introduce herself.

There's only one obvious conclusion to draw here. Daddy's still got it. Well, at least that's how I choose to see it. Don't burst my bubble by telling me otherwise.

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