This was written in my English class as a narrative assignment. A timed essay... but I'm actually okay with the way it turned out.

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Miss Lucy Had Some Leeches

I’m not too sure where the influence came from. It may have been Sharon Corr sawing away on her electric one, but then again, it just as easily could have been Wolfy Amadeus in his Symphony No. 40. I was roughly eight years old when I decided I wanted to play the violin, and ten years old when I got my wish; plus something a little more: I got lessons. At least for a short while.

But it’s been five years since my last lesson, save for the occasional times I opened my books and taught myself a technique or two. But I would go on for months without pulling my violin out of its case and merely watching as it collected dust in the far corner of my room.

Perhaps that never would have happened if my violin teacher, John, hadn’t gone to South Carolina to finish up college. But there’s really no point in my putting ‘what ifs’ in here. It won’t make me any more interesting.

Maybe I never would have picked the violin up again. I still listened to Mister Mozart’s No. 40 plus Joshua Bell on the soundtrack of the Canadian film, ‘The Red Violin’, but I was beginning to lean more toward Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls’ piano playing as well as (of all the instruments in the world) the accordion. For all I know, I could have gone for bagpipes somewhere down the road.

But then something happened. Something special and … inspirational.

I had/have been good, good, great friends with this girl (who shall remain nameless as to conceal my identity) who related to me something of most utter import: she knows I’m a Hamlet fan and that I’d liked Ophelia, and (most randomly I must add) suggested for me to:

“Look up Emilie Autumn. I think you’ll like her; she’s got an album called ‘Opheliac’.”

And thus, my mundane life was thrown upside down by the Renaissance Fairy Princess from California called Emilie Autumn. The pink hair asylum inmate who sawed through her black electric violin just like Niccoló Paganini might have after breaking three of his four strings.

It was enough to have me begging my mother to allow me to have lessons again. But knowing my mother it takes her weeks, sometimes months for her to remember or get the chance. So I waited. And maybe pleaded. And pestered. Okay, nagged, until she gave in.

“Tuesdays at 5:30 until 6; can you handle that?”

I nodded eagerly, already itching to drag my violin case out from its corner in my room where no sunlight fell. “Yeah, yeah, sure. I can do that.”

My mother eyed me skeptically; that dangerous glint in her brown eyes and a look of ultimate death just touching the edge of her expression. It was enough to make one’s skin crawl. “You’d better,”

So here I sit: Tuesday at 5:19 on Route 9 stuck in traffic. I’d had to go with my dad to Best Buy to snag a copy of A Clockwork Orange and pray I’d be in time for my first lesson. My dad sat beside me, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel absently to the beat of the Thin Lizzy song on the radio. I glanced at him only to catch him glaring at me from the corner of his eye.

“You see? I told you we’d hit traffic,” he lectured, then he scoffed, “and you just wanted to drop by home and pick up your violin.”

So, 5:32 we pull into the lot, grab my violin from the back seat, and rush (slipping on the wet pavement) into the building. Inside, there was a man in a baggy green shirt and a pointed nose waiting for me.

“You my new student?” he inquires, squinting at me, his eyes magnified by his glasses.

I shrug. “I suppose,” I reply.

A smile broke over his face as he bounced on his heels murmuring “Yay!” under his breath. That wasn’t in the least bit strange to me.

Roughly, that lesson went over screeches, out of tune strings, a high-wired bow, and a great misunderstanding when it came to tempo. One could easily say that I’m tempo impaired.

“Work on a song and tap your foot for the beat for fifteen minutes each day, alright?”

I nod as I agreed. Violin Concerto, here I come.

“And are those eyeballs on your ears?”

I glance up at him, then grin/grimace. Well, at least I was playing again.