"eight year olds, dude"

I had some time to kill in Chattanooga the other day, so I ran by Rick's Guitar Room out in Hixson. The owner, Rick, used to be a co-owner of Picker's Exchange back when they had a store on Brainerd Road. It had been at least a couple years since I'd run into Rick...

He likes to tell this story about me:

I started playing guitar in the third grade. I guess that puts me at about eight years old. My grandpa had bought me my first guitar from a pawn shop, and I think I had to beg my parents to let me take lessons. Someone recommended Picker's Exchange, so we went and checked it out. Apparently everyone there, including Rick, thought I was too young and my hands were too small and recommended I wait a few years. But I was determined.

I started taking from this guy named George Holder. I would come in to the store about 15-20 minutes before my lesson, grab an electric guitar off the wall, and plug it in to one of the amps up on this stage in the corner of the store. Maybe at this point I had been taking lessons for a few weeks, so my knowledge was limited. According to Rick, I would just wail away on this guitar, strings ringing - probably out of tune - and it was obvious I had absolutely no clue what I was doing. But Rick says my face would light up, and he could tell that this little kid just might have what it takes to be a guitar player. And sure enough, week after week, he watched me slowly get better as I proved to all the old farts that I wasn't too young and my hands weren't too small. I showed them.


I've gotten to hear this story a few times over the years visiting Picker's Exchange and Rick's Guitar Room. It used to embarrass me. I did not want anyone to know that I had ever been young and inexperienced. I just didn't like to think of myself as a child, I suppose. However, this last time I got to hear Rick tell the story, I heard it completely differently.

Here was a kid with enough audacity (and balls, quite frankly) to plug in and go to town on the guitar, even if he had no clue what he was doing whatsoever. It was a completely foreign thing, this electric guitar contraption connected to an amplifier thingy, and eight-year-old-me was curious and excited about what it could do and the sounds it could make. And he didn't give a shit if everyone in the store could hear the godawful noises he was making. Obviously, they could hear.

And now, at this point in my life and in my music career, I have found that if I want to create anything of value, I am going to need to shed all of my adult inhibitions. This caring about what other people think or what I might sound like to them. This fear of playing a wrong note or playing with the wrong guitar tone or missing a cue or singing out of tune or just messing up in general. These are adult fears. The child fears that the excitement will somehow get taken away. As an adult, I am afraid I have taken steps to do just that.

I intend to live my life like a child in a sandbox. Playful. Deliberate. The perfect balance of handle-with-care and carelessness. Continuously architecting. Repeatedly destroying. And most importantly, not giving a shit who watches or what the hell they think.

Thank you, Rick, for helping to reacquaint me with eight-year-old-self.