Taking A Path To Maturity Via Guitars

Pardon us while we climb out of this generation gap we fell into recently. It may take us a while - there's nothing that can make you feel so old as realizing your youngest child has come to a point of mature judgment in life. Here's how it happened to us.

Our youngest son, who's 15, has been surprising us all year. First, back in January, he signed up for a music class in guitar at school. We confess we were tempted at first to add extra insulation to his bedroom and pretend it was his new recording studio, but we managed to restrain ourselves. Then our son surprised by showing a heretofore unsuspected aptitude for playing the guitar. We can only surmise that his newfound talent spurred him to keep up with daily music exercises, running up and down scales on the guitar strings as if they were the old playset in the backyard.

Well, his father was so impressed that he decided at the first opportunity to get our teen-ager his own guitar. He combed the online classified ads looking for every announcement of an electric guitar for sale. Trouble was, most of those ads wanted 'way more than we could afford in this recession economy.

We tried to keep it a secret from our son, but you know 15-year-old ears. You can be screaming at the top of your lungs and a 15-year-old won't hear a word you shout. But try whispering a conversation at the kitchen table over coffee, and the next thing you know he's dancing around the kitchen singing, 'I'm getting a guitar! I'm getting a guitar!'

Our son was ecstatic. Not only would he not have to borrow one of his teacher's guitars for practice; he'd have his very own instrument that he could use (and abuse, most likely) any way he pleased.

However, we got a major parental jolt when Dad inquired about which model of rock 'n roll guitar our son desired.

Our son's face became very solemn at the word 'rock.' Then he rather sheepishly told his parents that he'd been studying classical guitar, not rock 'n roll. He didn't want the kind of flat-backed electric 'axes' we knew from our younger days. He wanted something for classical music, such as a Takamine acoustic electric guitar.

Then after a moment, he added we also might consider the Ibanez acoustic electric guitar.

We were stunned. For all that we expected him to be influenced by rock music culture, he'd chosen for himself to study the classics.

That's how we fell into this canyon of the ages. Now that we're out, we know our family has reached a new plateau - accompanied by guitar music, no less.