Notes from a Piano

            I remember my parents paying for me to take piano lessons.  I would attend lessons once a week.  I would practice and practice but the section of my brain designed to understand musical notes saw nothing but blotches lined up in little rows.  I never got it.

Much later in life I ended up buying a piano from a friend of mine.  I didn’t need the piano but he needed the money so the deal was made.  As soon as he could pay me back he’d once again have the piano.

 

          For years after that exchange the piano sat quietly in our house like some 1000-pound tribute to Chopsticks.

         

          Back in 97 my friend passed away.  At that time I laminated the last picture taken of the two of us together and I put it into my wallet.

 

          Over the years that photograph has been working its way out of the lamination.  

 

          Keep in mind - the inside of lamination plastic is very sticky and once you apply it to a photograph, well let’s just say you don’t get a second chance if you don’t get it straight the first time.

 

          So here you have it, one wallet sized photo - laminated front and back, kept undisturbed within my wallet and the picture keeps working its way out from between the very sticky laminations.

 

          In a process of elimination experiment I took the photo from my wallet and put it between the pages of a book and left it there for over a year.  This way we were removing the possibility of any inadvertent movement. 

 

          When we opened the book to check the photo we saw that the picture was still working its way away from the protective plastic covering.

 

          I’d like to think that if the spirit of my friend is attempting to contact me it is for him a casual activity, like doing a crossword and not some involved, frustrating torturous process that he is going through while I, like some dolt, are seeing only blotches.