Piano lessons can be scary. Yes. Mondays are my piano lesson days. As I walked up the driveway to my piano teacher's house I realized the danger I was in.. because once again, I had not memorized the piece she had wanted me too. The piece is to be played in a recital two weeks from now.
Totally unprepared and just a little bit frightened.. I opened the door and went into her house. She greeted me with a warm welcome and I did my best to stall her from starting our lesson. Unfortunately, my stall did not waste nearly as much time as I wanted to.
"So Daphne!!" she smiles brightly. "Did you memorize your piece yet?" She smiles again. "heh...." I return the smile, with much fear. "May.. be..?" I "heh" a few more times.
She whisks away my music that was standing oh-so-innocently on the piano. She opens it to the page where my piece lays and seats herself comfortably on a chair with soft cushions. She looks at me with piercing eyes, all friendliness gone, and orders me to begin.
I play as much as I could remember... and as best as I could... In my peripheral vision I see my teacher "tsk"ing and shaking her head countless times scribbling away in my music marking here and there and defiling my already-marked music. Storming over to where I was, she orders me to play with the music slowly. A couple mistakes made, and she brandishes a pen (something non-erasable) and scrawls large lines, scribbles and curves all over my sheet music that was once beautifully clean..
Sweatdropping a couple more times, I try my best to play with no mistakes as I can see she's kinda losing her cool. But my efforts were all in vain as I play the wrong notes with wrong rhythms, and I saw from the corner of my eye that she was very exasperated at this point.
Feeling a bit miffed at my now unrecognizable sheet of music, she whips out her pen again and very angry now, makes deeper, darker marks ... and in her temper, accidentally tore a small hole in my music.
Wide eyed, I let my mouth drop a little, and I stared with a shocked expression on my face. Looking up at my teacher's face, she apparently did not notice the small hole in my music, for her face showed no guilt whatsoever; and she continued on as if nothing had happened.
I was very offended, and it was good luck, I tell you, that my mother chose that particular time to fetch me. "Practice practice practice!!" my piano teacher cheerily chimed, and waved goodbye.
Twitching with annoyance, I swept my books into my bag and left abruptly, cradling my injured, marked music in my capable arms. Leaving her house, I am completely convinced that I should practice more often to prevent any more of her awful illegible writing onto my paper. Lesson learned.
Totally unprepared and just a little bit frightened.. I opened the door and went into her house. She greeted me with a warm welcome and I did my best to stall her from starting our lesson. Unfortunately, my stall did not waste nearly as much time as I wanted to.
"So Daphne!!" she smiles brightly. "Did you memorize your piece yet?" She smiles again. "heh...." I return the smile, with much fear. "May.. be..?" I "heh" a few more times.
She whisks away my music that was standing oh-so-innocently on the piano. She opens it to the page where my piece lays and seats herself comfortably on a chair with soft cushions. She looks at me with piercing eyes, all friendliness gone, and orders me to begin.
I play as much as I could remember... and as best as I could... In my peripheral vision I see my teacher "tsk"ing and shaking her head countless times scribbling away in my music marking here and there and defiling my already-marked music. Storming over to where I was, she orders me to play with the music slowly. A couple mistakes made, and she brandishes a pen (something non-erasable) and scrawls large lines, scribbles and curves all over my sheet music that was once beautifully clean..
Sweatdropping a couple more times, I try my best to play with no mistakes as I can see she's kinda losing her cool. But my efforts were all in vain as I play the wrong notes with wrong rhythms, and I saw from the corner of my eye that she was very exasperated at this point.
Feeling a bit miffed at my now unrecognizable sheet of music, she whips out her pen again and very angry now, makes deeper, darker marks ... and in her temper, accidentally tore a small hole in my music.
Wide eyed, I let my mouth drop a little, and I stared with a shocked expression on my face. Looking up at my teacher's face, she apparently did not notice the small hole in my music, for her face showed no guilt whatsoever; and she continued on as if nothing had happened.
I was very offended, and it was good luck, I tell you, that my mother chose that particular time to fetch me. "Practice practice practice!!" my piano teacher cheerily chimed, and waved goodbye.
Twitching with annoyance, I swept my books into my bag and left abruptly, cradling my injured, marked music in my capable arms. Leaving her house, I am completely convinced that I should practice more often to prevent any more of her awful illegible writing onto my paper. Lesson learned.