Growing up, I always wanted to play an instrument.
It was just a matter of finding the right one.
By the time I was 12, I’d completely thrown in the towel on piano lessons (to my Asian parents’ dismay). I’d tried and hated violin, too. I tried playing the recorder/flute/whatever in music class. None of it was satisfying.
No. I needed something…
So I picked up the guitar.
It was love at first strum.
I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it sooner — my dad always played guitar around the house. He started playing as a teenager in Karachi, learning Elvis songs. He’d get scolded by his religiously conservative mom, so he played it secretly in his room.
He brought that passion over to the States when he immigrated here in the ’70s. He still has the same Fender nylon-string acoustic guitar he bought when he moved to Chicago. (I actually bought him a fancy new guitar for his birthday two years ago, but he never plays it. He still loves his original Fender, even if it is cheap and goes out of tune easily and needs a new fretboard. Hashtag SENTIMENTALITY.)
