“She can’t play this guitar you sold us.”  The young father stood at the counter and held the pretty blue 3/4 size guitar out to me, the anxious little girl looking on.  I glanced at the guitar, but saw no obvious defect.  Turning my eyes back with a quizzical expression on my face, I started to ask for an explanation, but he spoke before I could.  “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with the guitar.  It’s just that my little girl is left-handed and you sold us a right-handed guitar.”  The light came on for me and I began to talk a bit more intelligently, as I explained the options available to rectify the problem.  It’s not the first time this has happened.

Before I go any further, I’m wondering…have you ever been in a situation where you felt like you didn’t belong?  I’ve felt like that more times than I care to admit.  I grew up being socially backward in many ways.  There’s no blame to place; it’s just that we didn’t have opportunity to experience a lot of situations that many others of my generation did.  Because of that, many times even as an adult, I have felt like a fish out of water.  As I prepared to write this post, I spent a little while researching the various phrases we use to express the idea of being different, or being odd.  We use them all the time in conversation and you’ll see them in quotes throughout this little essay.  “Fish out of water” was one of those phrases, with the picture of a small marine animal lying on the banks of a river gasping for oxyg…no…gasping for water.  For the poor fish, the life giving gaseous material all around us on dry land is deadly; his breathing apparatus poorly suited for our environment.  I wonder if the fish have a saying about humans out of air?  Well, you get the picture.  And, you’ve probably been there, gasping for the chance to be somewhere else, as you suffer through a situation in which you’re extremely uncomfortable.

For various reasons, some people go through life like that, dealing with being the “odd man out“, the “fifth wheel“.  The little left-handed girl reminded me of that today.  She will deal with that handicap (yeah I know; it’s not politically correct to call it a handicap) for all of her life.  Scissors will not fit her hand; she may write in a backhand to be able to read what she’s writing, since we form our letters the  wrong direction for a southpaw; salespersons (like me) will hand her a pen to sign a receipt, aiming it for her right hand out of habit; the car she drives will have controls on the right side of the steering wheel…the list will go on for all of her life.

The sad thought that also occurs to me is this:  She doesn’t need to be the “oddball” in this particular situation.  When it comes to playing the guitar, this young lady has the advantage of all the right-handed folks who ever aspired to play the six-string music box.  You see, the guitar is ideally suited for a left-handed player just the way it’s designed.  For most players, the process of learning to play a guitar is torture, making them learn motor skills that have never been demanded of their non-dominant paw before.  The reason is that most of the dexterity demanded to play the guitar is in the left hand, which is the hand that rests on the neck of the guitar, forming chords, moving quickly through scale patterns, or sliding from fret to fret in hammer-ons and pull-offs.  The left hand.  I’ve had this discussion time and time again, finally giving up when faced with the emotional student or helpful parent, knowing that it’s an argument I’m destined to lose, every time.  I’ve searched for an answer to the questions this raises, but to no avail.  It appears that the mind of the left-handed person had been conditioned to assume that all activities will have to be accomplished in a mirror-image to those in the majority in this world.  Therefore, when the lefty sees a guitar being played by most players slung to the left side and being fingered with the left hand, they assume that they will have to play it the opposite way.  The difficulty they encounter in learning to play chords and scales (a difficulty all students will have, incidentally) only reinforces the belief that they cannot learn to play the “right-handed” instrument.  Any arguments to the contrary notwithstanding, they won’t learn to play the instrument unless it’s set up the opposite way.

I made the necessary changes to the guitar for the little girl.  She was excited and grateful when she came in with her daddy to pick up the transformed instrument.  Once again, I was struck with the lesson of how our brains and emotions work against us.  If we are taught, either by words or by repetition of action, that we don’t fit, it’s amazingly difficult for us to buck the conditioning.  As I experience frequently, it will always feel wrong to be in those situations  and we’ll be as “awkward as a bull in a china shop”.  The bright spot in facing this issue is that as adults, we can make a conscious choice.  We can retreat and stay out of uncomfortable settings, or we can make a decision to overcome those false fears and enjoy being a part of the culture in which we live.

As I write, I’m struck with one more thought.  In some ways, we are the “odd man out”, if we’re followers of the ultimate non-conformist.  He told us that we are not of this world, that He has chosen us.  I’m pretty sure there are some situations in which we are uncomfortable because we don’t belong there.  You know the ones I mean.  Try as you might, if you belong to Him, you’ll never fit in there.  Sometimes, being the one “left out in the cold” isn’t such a bad thing.

So, swim in the water, if you’re a fish.  We don’t have to live life “out of our element”.  Just make sure that what we think are circumstances beyond our control aren’t really opportunities to grow instead.  Sometimes, being “out of our comfort zone” actually makes us better human beings.

Being self-employed has its advantages.  This particular week in April isn’t one of them.  The due date for filing tax returns and paying unpaid taxes from the former year has always been one of those days which I approach with apprehension and disdain.  Oh, I know for most of you reading this, that statement makes no sense.  You’ve worked another year; your employer withheld the amount of taxes you requested, and you probably already received a refund from your wealthy Uncle Sam.  I’ll try to go easy on this point, but the reason he has all that money is that you gave him an interest free loan for the past 12 months.  That said, I have dreamed about receiving a refund from the Treasury some April, but it will probably never happen.  At least, it is to be hoped not.  As a businessman, it’s not to my advantage to allow any capital to leave my control except for investment in merchandise which will net a profit.  If I’m giving interest-free loans to my Uncle in Washington, I can’t be buying guitars in my hometown.

There was one April, twenty-five years ago, when I wished I had given the IRS a fair amount more money, because when the time came to pay up for the year, all the capital was tied up in assets.  They didn’t appear to be liquid assets either.  I was devastated to learn the week before the fifteenth of the month, that we owed almost $4000 dollars in taxes on the previous year’s income.  I argued with the accountant, to no avail.  “The numbers don’t lie, Paul,” he explained as he showed me the facts in black and white.  We had purchased too much inventory and the government was treating that increased stock as profit.  Cash or no cash, we needed four thousand dollars within the next week or the penalties and interest would begin to stack up.

It was a little ironic.  Just the year before, when the accountant handed me the packet of forms to mail in, he asked delicately, “Paul, do you need anything?  We’re about the same size.  I’d be happy to give you some clothes…”  I thanked him, but gently brushed aside his offer.  We didn’t know we were financially embarrassed.  Our two children had nice clothes, we were making our payments on our house and business, and the old cars were paid for and running (most of the time).  The Lovely Lady and I giggled about someone thinking we needed to be helped and then kept plugging away at the business we had just acquired and were struggling to keep afloat.  Now, barely a year later, we owed almost twenty percent of a year’s profit in taxes because of poor planning on our part!

Where were we going to get that kind of money in a week?  We didn’t believe in borrowing money to pay taxes; it just didn’t make any sense.  But, we never had that kind of cash come in in such a short period of time, at least not funds that weren’t already designated for rent and other overhead, or inventory purchases.  I nearly panicked.  What to do?  Aha!  I had it!  I would call my Dad.  Obviously, I wouldn’t ask for a loan, but after hearing our predicament, he couldn’t do anything but offer to help, right?  I made the call that night.  After making small talk for awhile, I mentioned my problem.  He listened and then offered advice.  Not money, advice!  Evidently, he hadn’t gotten the memo that when his son, who never asked for money, called talking about money problems, it meant that he was expected to pony up.  That’s what Dads do, isn’t it?  Well not my Dad, at least not this time.

“Hmmm.  You know, the disciples in the Bible had a similar problem.  What did Jesus tell them to do?”  Well I knew the answer from Sunday School days, just as most of you do.  I was disgusted with him, but I responded anyway, “He told them to go fishing and they caught a fish, with the money for their taxes in its mouth.”  I couldn’t resist a little jab though, “How does that help me?”  His laconic reply came, “I really don’t know.  I was just remembering that’s what He told them to do.”  With nothing else to be said, we ended the conversation.

“Great!”  I groused at the Lovely Lady.  “No help at all, just some stupid line about what the disciples did in the Bible.”  I still had no plan, no visible means to take care of my obligation.  I went to bed, only to toss and turn as I lay there.  “What does it mean?  What does it mean?”  Sleepless, I got up and went downstairs to sit and read the passage in the Bible.  No help there.  I knew what they had done.  They went fishing.  They were fishermen, and they went fishing.  The light in my head came on with a brilliant flare!  They went fishing!  They did their jobs; nothing more, nothing less.  Their profession was catching fish from the sea, so that’s what they did.  I still wasn’t completely sure what it meant to me, nor how the money would come, but for now, all I was sure of was that I needed to go to work and do what I was trained to do, what I had been gifted at.  And, that’s just what we did.

For the next week, we opened the music store at the regular time in the morning and then, at the regular time in the afternoon, we closed it and went home.  In between, we did a bunch of praying.  I kept expecting some moneybags buyer to walk in and purchase half of our stock, paying cash for it, but it never happened.  We rang up sales on the cash register, day after day; some were significant amounts, some were small, but there was no spectacular, miraculous event.  We paid our rent and our electric bill, as well as the invoices for merchandise which we received during that time.  And, on April fifteenth, we placed our tax forms in the stamped envelope, along with a check for nearly four thousand dollars, completely covered by cash in the bank!  There was no hoopla, no extraordinarily large sale, no borrowing; we just did our jobs.  I will affirm that we never had that much extra in a week’s time before or after, without a large sale.  I still cannot explain it.  We paid our bills, did our regular tasks, and were provided for.

“How anticlimactic!”  I hear you say.  “No huge miracle?  No wealthy benefactor?  No mysterious check in the mailbox?  Just, go to work?”  That’s it.  And, you know…my years on this earth tell me that this is how most miracles happen.  No genies, no lamp to rub, no magic wand; just simply doing what we were made to do.  God rewards faithfulness.  In the quiet, plain paths, His miracles are inconspicuously bestowed.  Not with the commotion of a dog-and-pony show, not in the glare of the spot-lights and television cameras, but in factories, and shops, and homes, He cares for His own.

“Going fishing!”  That’s how I answered the question from my young children about how we were going to take care of our need, that April so long ago. I’ve thought of it often at other times too, but without fail, the events of that week in early spring twenty-five years ago are called to mind every time April rolls around again.  I’m still amazed today.

“…go down to the lake and throw in a line. Open the mouth of the first fish you catch, and you will find a large silver coin. Take it and pay the tax for both of us.”
(Matthew 17:27~New Living Translation)

“When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.”
(Helen Keller~blind and deaf American author and educator~1880-1968)

The phone behind our front counter died today.  I don’t think it was a natural death, but I didn’t kill it (even if I have threatened physical harm to it in the past).  One moment it worked (too well), the next it was lifeless.  It was, in fact, so lifeless that it started sucking the life out of the other phones on the system.  Perhaps the static on the lines and flashing LEDs on the other units was their way of honoring their comrade’s passing.  Whatever it was, the moment I unplugged the extinct culprit, the other sets straightened up their act and got back to their normal annoying ways.  You know, the love/hate, can’t stand you/got to have you status, which is perpetual with telephones and me.

Earlier today, I would happily have committed murder of the now-deceased phone myself.  The morning, as happens most days, was full of noisy activity.  The cleaning crew was working, with their vacuum roaring and brooms swishing, when we arrived; the phone already making its presence known with its incessant clamoring.  Stock orders (the Lovely Lady having labored on them into the waning hours of Tuesday) needing to be completed and transmitted, were vying for my attention; emails were wiggling their beckoning fingers from the Inbox.  Please don’t think that I’m attempting to arouse feelings of sympathy in the reader, but this is my normal day.  It is also the reason that the doors of the music store remain locked to walk-in customers until noon daily.  They’re not any happier to be put off than are any of the other distractions.  All morning long they whip into the parking lot, only to notice the darkened windows and shade pulled down on the door.  Some take the time to read the posted hours, others just exclaim with frustration (sometimes in words I cannot report here).  There are numerous black tire marks on the pavement; mementos of pent up anger finding outlet in the accelerators of powerful machines leaving the lot rapidly.  I have learned to take it in stride and am determined to do my best to calm the troubled waters when they return later during business hours.

Did I get off topic again?  Well, no, not really.  You see, the now-dead telephone and my threat to commit a violent act upon the handset are closely related to opening time.  It seems that almost daily, the notion to call the toll-free line (which comes in on that phone) hits some clueless person at about ten minutes before time for us to face the angry mob.  When I say clueless, what I mean is a person who either doesn’t understand what it is that we sell, or who can’t make a decision between the many titles available to them.  Noon usually finds me explaining what a “back-ground vocal” is, or the difference between accompaniment and karaoke tracks (for the twelfth time).  There’s no hope of getting off the phone to turn on the “Open” sign, or to unlock the door for the guy who is there for the third time today, needing a clarinet reed for his daughter’s twelve o’clock class at school.  Somebody please tell me, why that couldn’t be the time that the telephone died?

The crisis over and tempers soothed, the afternoon rolled on, with a few speed bumps, but overall a pretty normal day.  Just moments before I had to leave to examine an instrument in a customer’s home, the passing of the telephone was discovered.  Almost before I had time to feel any satisfaction and gratification for the death of my tormentor, I realized that I needed that phone desperately.  Without it, someone would be leaning across my desk continuously to answer calls there, instead of the phone up front.  Two lines ringing at once will mean someone has to leave the sales floor to take the second call in the back office.  And what if I’m here by myself and the second line rings?  The expired unit was the main telephone, containing in its circuitry the ability to shift calls to an “auto-attendant”, who was nice enough to inform customers that we couldn’t take their calls, but would be happy to call them back.  When the phone kicked the bucket, so did the auto-attendant.  I’m not really sad for her/him, but the customers now think we’re ignoring their calls.  And, I have done that purposely before, but only after consulting the now defunct Caller ID screen, another victim of the calamity.

I need this phone!  I can’t live without this phone!  Amazing isn’t it?  A moment before, I wanted that olio of integrated circuits, batteries, and wires dead.  The moment I had my wish, I realized my great need of it.  And once again, I was faced with the incongruity of human nature. We fail to appreciate the very things which give us the ability to perform necessary tasks.  We focus on the aggravation, never concentrating on how essential are these tools which we wield so thoughtlessly.  We are blessed beyond belief with conveniences which our parents and grandparents never dreamed possible, and we dismiss them as annoyances.  But oh, how we miss them when we don’t have them. 

I can’t avoid the picture in my mind of a young Tom Sawyer, lying on the ground under Becky Thatcher’s bedroom window, thinking, “They’ll all be sorry when they find my cold, dead body lying here.”  Of course, the cold, dead body jumped up rather quickly when someone opened up a window and tossed out a pan full of water on him.

If only I could throw water on this unresponsive telephone, now fit for nothing but recycling.  Nothing I can do will revive it, so I have ordered a new one, just like the dearly departed unit.  It should be here within 36 hours and I can be miserable again.  Or, ecstatically happy. 

Oh well, as a wise friend of mine often says, “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”  I’m paying my money, and then I’m going to work a little harder at appreciating the little things.  They seem bigger when they’re gone…

“I find my familiarity with thee has bred contempt.”
(Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra~Spanish author~1547-1616)

I checked my blood pressure at the grocery store the other day.  Yes, you read that correctly.  At the grocery store – well technically in the pharmacy section of the grocery store – but still in the same place I go to buy groceries with the Lovely Lady.  I sat and slid my arm into the cuff up to the bicep, steeling myself to the throttling pressure I knew was to come.  The cuff ballooned up and then slowly, very slowly, released it’s strangling grip.  I could feel the thump, thump, thump of the pulse in my arm as the compression dropped past the upper threshhold, the systolic reading; diminishing until it vanished completely at the lower calculation point, the diastolic reading.  An acceptable reading would be something less than 120 systolic over something less than 80 diastolic.  Mine was higher on both counts.  I’m not telling how much.  What a place to be ambushed by cautionary information; right before shopping for items which could be beneficial or detrimental to the rehabilitation of acceptable readings upon the next visit.  I much prefer those of the detrimental ilk, truth be told.

I’m not going to talk much about health issues, although it is, I’m told, the area most people my age excel at conversationally.  If we’re not bragging about our exceptional grandchildren, we’re sitting around participating in “organ recitals”; who had a heart attack, which friend is about to have a gall bladder removed, and what the doctor is insisting we do this week to get our cholesterol down to acceptable levels.  I’ll pass, thank you.  There are better things to talk about.  Well, better things than the medical predicaments.  The grandchildren?  Give me a minute and I’ll find the pictures I want to show you.  They’re right here on my cell phone…

Now, where was I?  Oh yes, blood pressure!  I’ve decided that stress is the biggest factor in raising mine, although I couldn’t prove it.  “What kind of stress?” you may ask.  As I age, I’m finding that noises cause me more stress than anything else.  I still take pride in allowing customers (and their children) to play the instruments in the music store, without asking them to turn down the volume, but that is increasingly costing me in terms of my emotional well-being.  I’m convinced that the amplifiers are louder, the drums more reverberating, and the banjos are definitely more twangy than they were years ago.  I attribute it to better technology, but most likely, it could be chalked up to aging.  Today for instance, a couple of customers were playing guitars, one acoustic, the other electric, when a young man walked in and sat down at the drum set.  Within moments, I was ready to pull out my hair and run screaming into the street.  You’ll be proud when you hear that I stayed put and waited them out as I labored at the string replacement I was performing on a guitar belonging to one of these fine young men. 

Within moments, all was calm except for the acoustic guitar player, whose guitar I was working on.  The acoustic guitar is easy to listen to most of the time, but sometime during that noisy uproar, he had found a high fret on the guitar he was playing.  I can’t explain it, but the principle is universal; if you find a high fret on a guitar, you have to keep playing the defective note over and over again.  Never mind that there are an average of 120 notes on the acoustic guitar (not counting harmonic tones).  That leaves at least 119 notes which may be played without once hearing the rattle of the high fret – giving fair odds, you might reckon, that you could safely play most any song you would desire on the instrument without hearing the dreaded rattle.  You would lose that bet every time.  I’ve never known a guitar player who could play even four or five notes on the instrument without returning to that defective note again…and again…and again.  If the blood pressure was elevated before, it was soaring now!  I completed the work on the young man’s guitar and headed him out the door as quickly as possible; reveling again in the renewed peacefulness of the silence.

Why is it that we can’t leave the negative alone, even when we have an overwhelming prevalence of positives?  The guitar principle isn’t only true in music, but in everything else I know.  The room has been flawlessly painted, but our eye is drawn to the one little spot on the wall with a run.  The cook has prepared innumerable dinners before which we raved about, but let us have one bad meal and we never darken the door of that establishment again.  A friend has been at our side without fail for many years, but let there be one slight, one misstep, and a rift in the relationship appears; often to be the death knell of an otherwise wonderful, lifelong friendship.  We can forget a multitude of excellent experiences, but we can’t forgive even one transgression.

I don’t want to be Pollyanna-ish, but we need to change perspectives.  We need to practice seeing the good things, not the bad; to make a habit of enjoying the amazing plethora of wonderful experiences God has blessed us with, instead of focusing on the few times of testing and unhappiness that come our way.  As usual, I know a verse that reinforces this principle.  In the Phillips translation (Paul’s, that is) we’re told;  “Think about the good things, whatever they are.  If they are worthy of praise, those are the things you should focus on.”  You’ll find the real words below, but that’s about the size of it.  Is it good stuff?  Let that be your focal point!

Play the notes that sound good!  The Repairman will take care of the rest in good time…

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”
(Philippians 4:8~New Living Translation)

“Goodness speaks in a whisper.  Evil shouts!”
(Ancient Tibetan proverb)

I have developed the annoying practice of speaking in adages.  That shouldn’t surprise you, since you know that I tend to be a conformist.  Opting for the course with the least amount of speed bumps, I often speak glibly and  impulsively.  These traits lead me to use common phrases and not give them a second thought.  See there!  I just did it.  “…give them a second thought.”  Why would I not say, “…think carefully before speaking”?  I am actually having to be judicious in my words as I write this to avoid more banalities, which I tend to gravitate to in my writing style also. 

I thought of this the other day, as I spoke with a customer.  He was describing a problem with his guitar, a vibration in the neck, which seemed to be happening with more frequency as time passed.  I talked about the serious issues which can be the cause of such a vibration, downplaying them a little as I spoke, but then reiterating the seriousness with these words, “…but, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”  As the words left my lips, I wished I hadn’t spoken them.  First, the problem was actually likely to be less drastic than the extreme case I had described, and second,  it sounded really stupid!  Where there’s smoke, there’s fire?  What does that have to do with a guitar neck?  And is it true, anyway?

I remember a time when I was happy that saying wasn’t factual.  In our early years of owning the music store, we were renting a space in a shopping center which I’ve spoken of before.  I told you of the progression of poorly vetted renters next to us, with a wall between that stopped short of the roof, allowing sounds and odors to travel freely between the spaces.  I hadn’t remembered the short term renters who moved in one week, late in October one year.  The trite saying falling from my lips the other day brought the memory back with a rush.

One of the junior civic clubs at the local high school decided that they would like to host a haunted house for Halloween that year.  Someone in the club knew someone else, who knew someone else, who knew the owner of the building.  I’m thinking he would have gladly rented to them without the elongated network of acquaintances, but it got them what they wanted, so they set to work.  For days before the scary night, they pulled up after school each afternoon, with furniture and building materials in the back of SUVs and pickups.  The noise and smells of construction continued on day after day, until the night of fright.  We left about the same time the cars were arriving that night, wondering what we would find the next day when we returned.  We didn’t expect to return as soon as we did.

About 11:00 that night, the phone rang at our house across town.  The voice on the other end informed me impassively that there was an emergency at my store and I needed to get there as quickly as I could.  I sped the mile from home, imagining every possible scenario, but was not quite ready for the vista that met my eyes.  I think every fire truck in town was in the parking lot, as well as any number of cars and trucks from the volunteer firemen who were utilized in much larger numbers in those days (the town was much smaller then).  As I ran past them to the front of the store, I realized that there were firemen on the roof, one of them standing near the front parapet holding a circular saw.  The next thing I noticed was the burly fireman next to the front door holding a sledge hammer, looking as if he was disappointed to see me.  As I unlocked the door and stepped back, several of them rushed in with respirators on their backs and masks covering their faces.  The smoke billowed out in great clouds, as the men with hoses stood ready to direct the stream of high-pressure water into the building.  Moments later, the men came out one by one, informing us that there was no fire to be found.

My relief was immense.  As I approached the door again, I sniffed the air and realized that the pent-up smoke was made up of nothing more than exhaust fumes.  I have smelled that odor many times when using a chain saw or power trimmer; the smell of burning oil from a two-cycle engine.  It seems that the kids running the haunted house had the bright idea of running a chain saw inside the building to frighten the patrons who were foolish enough to pay good money to wander through their maze of horror.  Too much oil mixed into the gasoline made for a very smokey mixture coming from the exhaust.  They evidently thought nothing of it, closing the building and turning out their lights when they were finished.  The problem is that the smoke-laden air forced its way into our space, which was lighted, making the black fumes visible from outside.  Some good citizen, noticing the smoke, called in the alarm; prompting the routing from bed of all involved.  I still think the fellow with the sledge hammer and the one on the roof with the saw were both extremely disappointed to see me arrive with my keys, since I nullified their chances to break down the door and cut a hole in the roof.  They were so hoping for the practice, too.

I’m grateful that sometimes when there’s smoke, there’s just smoke.  We look at situations where we believe an emergency exists, only to find that a high-velocity fan will fix the problem just fine, thank you.  Frequently the fire-hose can be folded back up without the need to flood the scene.  Would that we always had the wisdom to recognize those situations.  I’m thinking that a moment or two to check the facts can often alleviate the damage done by over-reacting.  I’m talking to myself as I write this, but you may listen in if you think it applies.  You know, if the shoe fits…But, there I go again…

Oh, the guitar?  Yep, nothing but smoke, either.  The fellow brought it to me; I fitted a wrench to the truss rod on the neck and gave it a turn or two.  The rattle disappeared instantly.  And I had the sledge hammer all ready, too.  Oh well, maybe next time…

“Man’s mind clumsily, and tediously, and laboriously patches little trivialities together and gets a result…such as it is.”
(Mark Twain~American humorist and writer~1835-1910)

“He wrapped himself in quotations – as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors.”
(Rudyard Kipling~English poet and author~1865-1936)