Guitar

Let me share you my little story of how I started learning guitar. I’ve started to learn how to play guitar January or February of 2007. At this time I was living in The Hub at 40^th and Chestnut st. I would always go back home during the weekends to attend my home church. So one Sunday, my cousin comes to service with a black guitar. It looked really nice and to my later surprise, it was his. I went to a small Korean Baptist church and there were only two people that knew how to play a guitar. One was my youth pastor and the other was a friend who only knew the chords for the key of G. I guess my cousin wanted to learn how to play and be the “cool” guy that also knows how to play the guitar. Anyways~ So I remember it was after service and all the youth kids were getting ready to set up for lunch. He brings out his guitar and gathered everyone to sing a song with him. Back then, if someone else brought in a guitar and it wasn’t the youth pastor, it was a really cool thing and we gave lot of respect to that person. I felt jealous that everyone was now looking up to my cousin. I felt terrible but when he started playing, my jealous feeling went away really quickly.

My cousin just started to play guitar that week and so now he isn’t that good with the transitions with the different chords. I forgot which song he was playing but it was slower than usual. BUT everyone still loved it and said lot of nice things to him. My jealously shot right back up and so after about 2/3 of the song, I cut him and demanded that I give it a shot. I had to admit, I was bad bad. I was slower than him but not that slow. Now back then I was someone that would give up if I couldn’t do it. I would have never touched or even bothered to learn how to play guitar if it weren’t for the words that came out of this one... ignorant little girl. (This is a side note but this kind of reminds me of the dvd cover of “My Sassy Girl.” There was a little quote on the corner of the back cover which translated, “The two couples wouldn’t be together if it weren’t for those words that came out of her mouth.” If you’ve seen My Sassy Girl, when the girl was drunk, she said “honey” to the guy which started their story.) She told me in Korean:

“why don’t you learn from him!”

I still can’t believe she said that to me!! My pride or something was being challenged hardcore from this girl. I really wanted to come back at her and just prove her wrong.

Once I got back to the Hub, my roommate brought his old guitar from his home. Back then I didn’t see it as a sign by God, instead something that I can practice and show her up next Sunday. Those words were enough to drive me mad for one whole week, playing 3-5 hours a day until I was getting bloody fingers JUST to come back the following Sunday to show her up! Nah mean (you know what I mean)!!!!

So that is exactly what I’ve done. I practiced and now I was definitely better than my cousin. I had trouble forming the Fmajor and the Bminor chords back then but my strumming was “bad to the bone.” I remember waiting patiently until the service was over. I grabbed my youth pastor’s guitar and I went downstairs to look for that one girl. I was still bitter even after one week. I didn’t get to find her so I ended up playing upstairs by myself. One adult was walking by and saw me holding a guitar. He told me that I shouldn’t pretend to play guitar and laughed at me. I remember thinking, “PSH~ No he didn’t”, and so I played a fast song. I remember seeing his smirk turning into a face that just got SLAMMED…by my awesomeness. I remember the senior pastor had coming down from his office to see who was strumming on the guitar. He was surprised that it was me. He made a positive comment on my new acquired guitar skills.

The moment of truth came when everyone in the youth group gathered in the sanctuary to practice for next Sunday’s worship. I was on the steps to the stage, playing random chords in the key of G. That girl came into the room and that was my signal to play like an excited monkey on crack. Everyone looked for couple seconds and then went back talking to their friends. That girl did the same… In my head, at that time, I was thinking that I won. She was definitely thinking how good I was and how wrong and incompetent she was in her head. As I’m writing this now… she definitely wasn’t.

So this is why I’ve come to learn guitar. Just because of that girl’s little comment, a new and a great time-killer hobby was discovered.