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I Am a Ridiculously Bad Violinist
At age 60, I have finally embraced my radical incompetence.
I started playing the violin when I was 14. My parents bought me a second-hand violin for $30.00 way back when we still lived in Newfoundland in the nineteen seventies. It was signed inside by the maker who was a man named John who hailed from a village called Joe Batt’s Arm. I think he also carved the black wooden case it came with. It was my Christmas present in 1973.
I didn’t actually start playing until two years later when we moved to Ontario. There was no music program at my junior high school in St. John’s, and my parents couldn’t afford private lessons then. We moved halfway through the school year in grade nine, which was junior high in Newfoundland, and, confusingly, high school in Ontario. Not to mention the fact that NL school ended in grade 11 and Ontario, uniquely, went up to something we called grade 13 in those days.
I found out after we moved that I had four more years left of school before university rather than two and was understandably pissed.
So I couldn’t take grade nine strings when I was in grade 9; I had to take it in grade 10. I really needed the basic course since I couldn’t even read music.
