I do. People are always acting like it makes me very special. Maybe if I explain it will not seem so special.

When I was little, Mom was always putting me into new things. I was in gymnastics, which I was very good at because I am so small, but I hated it because people were always reminding me how short I was. So mom took me out of that and put me in karate. Maybe she thought I would feel big if I could beat up kids who were bigger than me. I tried hard, but I couldn?t beat up anyone, so she took me out of karate too. Next I was on a soccer team, and that was okay, but parents at soccer games are always fighting. Once I had heard so much fighting that I picked up two cones and ran through the middle of the fight, waving them around and screaming. So I did not do soccer anymore. Then my mom put me into piano lessons.

Sometimes I tell this story to people who are interested for some reason, and they think that this is the part where I say ?happily ever after.? I hated piano lessons more than soccer, and more than karate, and even more than gymnastics. For three years, Monday was not only the beginning of the week, but after school we drove down to the smelly store with a dusty trumpet in the window. And a back room with a piano teacher in it who was so old, she would have been rusty too if she was a horn.

Judy, that was her name, told me how to put my fingers in the right shape, and to warm up three times every day, and who Ludwig van Beethoven was, and how to sit up straight. I slouch so much that I had to focus more on sitting up straight than playing the piano, because if I leaned over even one inch she would stop me and make me start all over.

Then one day I come out of my lesson crying. It is not the first time?in fact it is the seventh time?but this time my mom decides that I should not come in to see Judy anymore. At first I am very happy, but then she explains that she found a new teacher.

Tom Young is A Genius.

He can play with his eyes closed and he can play a whole song with just one hand and he is my teacher. When he is playing his hands jump around so fast they look like dancing spiders. And he says he will teach me to play the blues.

We live in a different state than Tom now, but I still play the blues. But instead of making me feel like crying, the blues make me feel really warm inside. Like everything is going to be okay.