Chapter One, In Which She Explains How She Became the Owner of an Acoustic Guitar

The guitar I now hold was purchased for $110 at a music store in my Midwestern hometown, approximately eight years ago.

I obtained said guitar the summer after my sophomore year in college. I had spent the first half of that summer at a camp in Michigan, shepherding a dozen 15-year-old girls through five weeks of angst. (And I do mean angst. Four out of twelve of my campers had noticable eating disorders; I had to institute the rule that not while living under my roof was anyone to be caught eating yogurt with a fork.) While there, I fell head over heels in love with another counselor, who played a mean guitar.

Let's be honest, it's not hard to fall for the player of a mean guitar. Guitar players are, by their very nature, more attractive than the rest of us.

I spent the second half of the summer mooning and crying and spending the pittance I'd made at camp on a guitar, a case, a book of Peter, Paul and Mary songs, and approximately six guitar lessons wherein I learned absolutely nothing I can recall today.

Back at school, I decided I'd learn to play on my parents' dime--by taking a legitimate for-credit course in classical guitar.

Classical, acoustic--whatever. It was pretty much all the same, right?

Yeah, no. Only after renting a nylon-strung instrument and being shown by my octogenarian professor the very not cool classical guitar posture did I realize what I'd gotten myself into.

I wanted to learn Indigo Girls songs, fer chrissakes. I didn't care whether my prof had once eaten tapas with Andreas Segovia.

Luckily, by second semester my body found an out for me. Thanks to that ass-backwards posture, I developed acute tendonitis in my left shoulder. I must admit I was giddy the day I discovered I'd have to bid my old prof adieu.

The classical guitar went back to its home--a guitar store in Silver Spring, MD--and my barely-used acoustic found itself, along with my dreams of becoming a tried and true Guitar Girl, packed into the back of my closet. Somewhere between a crate of old photo albums and that other dust-gatherer, the sewing machine, my steel-stringed beauty nestled in for a long winter's nap.