Whenever I see flags wildly flapping like this I think about learning to play this song on the piano that had the lyrics “down at the airport (or maybe station?) the windsock is flying.” No one else has ever heard of it so I thought maybe I’d made it up, but here it is: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e7BHpxVze1Y — in case it isn’t obvious from this snippet, I was NOT a piano prodigy. The piano came with the house we bought when I was ten and was in the garage. I was the only kid in the neighborhood who didn’t take lessons in the winter because it was too cold to practice out there. After three years I was finally “good enough” to play in my first and only recital — we played in order of skill: worst to best. I was first playing “Dangerous Journey” after it was determined that “Fur Elise,” which was my favorite song, was too difficult for me. My piano teacher “retired” shortly after this debacle. The only song I really learned to play well was that Barry Manilow favorite, “Mandy,” which I’m sure my entire family despised because I played it endlessly once the piano was moved into the house (after five years of playing in the garage). No one liked this arrangement since the piano was in the same room as the TV and the competition between the two was fierce and involved a lot of yelling for me to stop playing so my brothers could hear the TV, which of course only made me play louder, forcing them to turn up the volume on the television. At this point my dad would come in and make me go to the kitchen to set the table and make my brothers go outside and “run around.” This is how my dreams of becoming a famous pianist were squashed.
