When I was in first or second grade I started piano lessons, at my parents' insistence. I was driven to the home of the piano teacher - a Mrs. Pfeiffer - and after I had been taking lessons for a while, I learned to play a song which I was to play at a recital.
Recital.
I remember that word.
It hung over my head with a menacing air.
I was scared to play the piano in front of people.
Then we moved away from Mineral City, Ohio, to our new home in Rootstown, Ohio, where my dad would be pastor of the First Congregational United Church Of Christ. (It was within walking distance of the parsonage, where we lived.)
Moving away did not excuse me from having to play in the piano recital.
(You can run, but you can't hide.)
On the night of the recital, dressed as if for church, I was driven back to either Dover or New Philadelphia, where the event was held, and I played my song when it was my turn. It went well.
But I didn't want to play the piano in front of an audience ever again.
It made me too nervous.
Recently I remembered that when I worked as a summer girl and was really bored with living in "the suburbs," the family I worked for went to Shakey's Pizza Parlor for supper one evening.
There was a piano there.
No one was playing it.
And I got up, went over to that piano, and played a song I knew by heart.
My teenage boredom had overcome my "stage fright"!
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