Wood
Ruler
Cleaning
out my office desk drawer is a semi-annual event. How all that stuff gets
deposited in one small drawer is a mystery. In addition to the menagerie of
paper clips, rubber bands, dead AAA batteries, assorted keys and dated
appointed reminders is an aged wood ruler. Remember the foot long, razor edged
piece of wood with black inch markings? Not plastic but real wood!
My
most poignant memory of the wood ruler was not school related. It was the nun
who used that instrument as a weapon of torture every time I played the wrong
note during my piano lesson. It was my parents who believed that I needed to
broaden my classical education by weekly piano lessons at the convent.
Week
after week I climbed those steps to the convent recital room. Every lesson was
an exercise in medieval torture. Hard as I tried not to get whacked with that
ruler, I would walk away with bruised knuckles. To make matters worse, the
sister would put pennies on my knuckles so that I would learn proper hand
posture at the keys. When pennies fell the ruler would come down.
I
had eight years of knuckle rapping fun learning to play the piano. I came away
from that experience wanting to keep a healthy distance from both piano and
nuns. Looking back, I learned basically nothing about piano and the only rhythm
I remember is the whacking beat of the wood ruler.
I
keep that ruler in my desk as a reminder of what I could have been: a concert
pianist with healthy knuckles.
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