6WorkingCareer, Job, or Hellscape?
When I was in third grade, my elementary school offered music lessons. I opted to learn the violin because my crush played the violin, and he sported a cute rattail haircut. If I could just sit behind him and his rattail every week, maybe, just maybe, it would improve my chances. Who knew what kind of magic would be made possible by the romantic sounds of the burgeoning string section?
Like everything else at my oversized public school, the music classes were conducted in very large groups. I missed the first few lessons and was too embarrassed to tell the teacher I didn’t know what I was doing. So I showed up for the rest of the year and air-played the violin, so that I looked like I was playing but no sound came out. I hovered the bow just above the strings and followed the general direction of my classmates to give the appearance of playing. When their bows went up at a 45-degree angle, so did mine. When other kids’ bows proceeded flat and slow along the strings, I leaned into the motion as though I had invented it. Up and down, back and forth, I became the Jimi Hendrix of the air violin, rocking out to nothing.
At the end of the school year, there was a mandatory test to determine each student’s knowledge and assess their skill level for the following year. I was petrified. The teacher was going to find out that ...
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