The Guitar

Copyright © 2008 Judith J. Bentley

Back in the '70s when I was teaching gifted students at Sandy Springs High School in Atlanta, Georgia, when students actually wanted to learn whatever their teachers had to teach, one of my students surprised me with a gift she had made herself--a small macramé bag with lots of beads that hung down at the end of streamers beneath the bottom of the bag – it had a very ‘60s hippie look to it. Another student gave me a beautiful silver compact and mirror from Thailand. I was embarrassed that any student would give me gifts, but I knew I would hurt their feelings if I refused to accept them.

I loved my students and taught with my heart as well as my head. I was a poet-in-residence at one school and used to enjoy teaching poetry especially as well as other forms of creative writing. I was not much older than my students then - maybe by four or five years - since I had just graduated from graduate school with my master's degree in English and Public Speaking in 1974. Some of my students were extremely gifted artists, others were musicians, and a few were very good writers. I think they inspired me more than they claimed I encouraged them.

Then one summer evening at the end of the school year, I heard a knock at my apartment door. I opened my door to find standing before me one of my senior students who had just graduated. He held in his hands his guitar on which he had often played for special school functions to everyone's delight. He would accompany his girlfriend too and students would beg her to sing popular Beatles' songs like "Blackbird." Curtis was a poet himself and an even better guitarist who could play the blues and jazz by ear though he was also classically trained. His favorite recording artist was Christopher Parkening. I was shocked that he had found my apartment because I had an unpublished telephone number and kept to myself at home since my divorce so I wasn't expecting a visitor and thought maybe it was my older brother who lived nearby.

I stood at the door without inviting Curtis in curious as to why he had come by. "I want you to have my guitar," he said as he held it out to me.

"What? Curtis, I cannot take your guitar!" I exclaimed in exasperation.

"Please, I want you to have it."

"Well, for Pete's sake! What am I going to do with your guitar? I can't play a guitar!"

I had been his English teacher during his junior and senior years.

"Well, maybe you could learn." He had absolutely insisted and wouldn't take no for an answer in spite of my protests. No sooner had he placed it in my hand than he had turned and was gone.

I was sad because I knew I would never be able to play jazz or the blues or that "Blackbird" song on any guitar, much less his, and I knew I would never again hear those sweet sounds that he could call forth from those strings. I was an amateur musician with a good ear, but what was I going to do with his guitar for crying out loud?

It sat silent in a corner in my apartment for several weeks until I couldn't take it anymore. I called the local guitar studio and signed up for lessons. I figured it couldn't be that hard since I could already play the piano pretty well. Boy, was I wrong. After a few lessons, my left wrist developed cramps from wrapping it around the neck of the guitar, my left hand fingers hurt from having to hold them in various contorted poses over the strings, and the fingers on my right hand were sore from plucking the strings and were developing calluses. I had to file my finger nails on an angle so they would grip the strings like picks. I didn't think I'd ever get to the point where playing even simple tunes would be "fun." It was hard work. I practiced some each day but not enough and after six months of lessons, I quit, but I had developed an appreciation for guitarists I would otherwise never have had had Curtis not given me his guitar and I had not guilt-tripped myself into taking lessons. I never saw or heard from Curtis again.

When I moved from Atlanta to Richmond, Virginia, I heard about a young classical guitarist in town named Cory. I began attending some of his concerts at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University). It wasn't long before I got up my courage to introduce myself to him and told him I had a folk guitar I didn't know what to do with that one of my students had given me back in Atlanta, and he could have it if he wanted it. I figured he'd put it to some good use. He was giving guitar lessons at a guitar studio in Carytown at the time, and he told me later that he used that guitar in teaching his students and really enjoyed it.

I tried to find Curtis on the Internet after I gave his guitar away just to let him know it was in very good hands of another fine guitarist, but I didn't have any luck. He would be in his 50s by now, I guess, that is, if he's even alive. I say this because I know I have survived some of the students I used to teach.