I didn’t learn to play the guitar until I stopped taking lessons. I took lessons for over a year, and that taught me more about not playing the guitar than about how to play.

I had a hand-me-down guitar from my cousin, and my friend Willy had a ukulele. Neither of us knew what the hell we were doing, but we’d get together once or twice a week and bang on our instruments, make lots of noise, and sing goofy songs. I talked about it here.

Anyway, we were driving our moms crazy, so they decided to sign us up for guitar lessons. Willy got a guitar, and the two of us were off to the Marion Cole School of Dance and Music to take lessons from a guy named Stan. Stan told us both to get Mel Bay’s Modern Guitar Method and a thin guitar pick, and come back the next week.

After a couple of weeks of ol’ Mel, I wondered what the hell I was learning. I knew other people who played the guitar, and they didn’t do anything like I was learning how to do. My Aunt Bitsy would come to our house, grab my guitar, and play all kinds of songs, like "Edelweiss," "Green Back Dollar," "Yellow Bird," and "Sloop John B". Meanwhile, I was struggling to learn the notes in the key of C on all the strings. My mother told me that I was learning real music, music that I had to read off the staff and all that. Screw that noise, I thought to myself, I want to play the guitar, not read notes off the staff.

Willy did fine. He took to it like a duck to water, and soon was on to Mel Bay’s Modern Guitar Method, Volume 2. Meanwhile, I was still dragging myself through "The Volga Boatman" and the ever-popular "Etude #2." I really hated Mel Bay by this point, and swore, if I ever met him, I would knee him right in the groin.

Stan wasn’t much better. Stan was a real jerk to start with, and I probably made matters worse by not practicing. Oh, I was playing the guitar just fine by then; I just wasn’t playing what he assigned me to play. They actually threatened to call my Mom. I begged them not to, then went home and told Mom I hated the lessons and Stan was a jerk and it was a real long walk to the studio and that I wanted out. She was amenable to that, and I called the Marion Cole School of Dance and Music and told them to take their guitar lessons and shove them where the sun didn’t shine. Well, I was a little nicer than that…

I considered burning Mel Bay’s Modern Guitar Method, but settled for throwing it in the garbage. Thus liberated, I went on to play the guitar and actually have fun doing it. I was doing what I should have done in the first place…

This week, I was looking at the prompts, and every time I’d start one, I’d ask, "hey, haven’t I done this already?" So I’d check, and lo and behold, yes I had. Since Saturday is our 45th anniversary, I was going to do #5, "Write about your proposal," and found that I already had.

Then, I thought of doing #1, "Write a blog post inspired by the word: fly," and saw I had done that one as well.

I checked the next one, "Tell us about a crush you had when you were younger." Uh-huh. Kat even said to me, "JOHN HOLTON STOP REMEMBERING THE PROMPTS YOU’VE ALREADY WRITTEN ON!!! lol! I’m going to start asking you to submit new prompts so that I can add them to the Spring list of writing topics!" I’m sure I did, but they might have gotten lost, or maybe I didn’t.

Anyway, I’ll come up with more and send them on to her, because I like this weekly exercise and I like Kat even more. If you have any, you can pass them on, or send them to her. I’m going to comb through some of the prompts I’ve seem with some of the other blog hops I participate in and see if any of them are appropriate (or can be made so), and pass them along. I have several books of them as well.

Okay, on to this week’s questions:

The older I get, the more I realize that I’ve done a lot of dumb things in my life, and made a lot of mistakes, but the one decision I made that I know was a good one was asking Mary to marry me. She’s always doing nice things for me, particularly in my current condition. I need help doing a lot of things now, including dressing and bathing, and I know that’s a real pain for her to do, but she does so without complaining. She does all the driving, and in fact is the one who does the shopping, though lately we’ve been using Instacart to do the shopping. That way, they do all the heavy lifting.

I used to take a limo service to the airport that was run by a man from Nigeria named Bernard. We were good friends, and as far as I know he’s still doing it. He was also their only driver. This one Sunday, I was leaving Atlanta, and Mary, who had been visiting her folks, was flying back in. I arranged with Bernard to drop me off, then pick her up and take her home.

Anyway, I was at the gate waiting for my flight, and I hear Mary calling my name. Bernard had gone to the gate to pick her up (this was long before 9/11), and when he saw my flight hadn’t left yet, he brought her by to see me, since I was going to be gone all week. It wasn’t the last time someone did something nice for me, but it’s one that stands out in my mind.

Mary and I are not into Valentine’s Day. We treat it like any other day, and don’t buy gifts for each other. I tried once: I bought her a red knit top with lace down the front, and she thanked me, but never wore it, and it became kind of a joke between us.

I’ve talked about our first Valentine’s Day, when we went to see Sarah Vaughn and Count Basie at the Park West, a concert venue where you sit at long tables and have a couple of drinks during the show. Our seats were right up front, facing the stage, right in front of the horn section, the standard four trumpets, four trombones, and four "woodwinds," all of whom play saxophone, a few of whom play flute and/or clarinet. They were all seated when Count and his longtime guitarist, Freddie Green, came onstage. One look at each other, and they were off to the races. Then the horns came in, and practically blew us over. Mary was shocked at first that it was SO LOUD, but as the show went on she really enjoyed it. I, of course, was in heaven. We really had fun: we were seated across the table from two middle-aged gentlemen who were clearly a couple, and somehow it just made the experience even better, because they were really funny.