Colly Strings

The night my grandfather died I was visiting some friends of my uncle's at their little house in south Memphis.  I don't remember their names, but they had a parrot that thought it was hilarious to bite me and some plastic horses that I generally ended up commandeering because I was five.  Everyone else got uproariously drunk when we visited, I played with plastic horses.  This described about 3/4 of my weekends for a while.

That evening we were all in the living room and one of the other guests said, "I want to play the guitar!  Go get yours."  So the lady of the house did, and the friend tried to recall how to play.  I remember her futzing around with it and eventually slicing the tip of her finger on the high e string.  She didn't notice at first, but blood ran everywhere - probably due at least in part to alcohol being a thinning agent.  It ran down the strings and her wrist and stained the cuff of her light blue shirt before she realized.  I felt woozy and confused because the adults were simply shrugging it off and saying things like "yeah, that happens if you don't play for a while."  


I thought: ADULTS ARE WEIRD.  I'M NEVER PLAYING THE GUITAR.  I MIGHT NOT EVER GROW UP.

And then the phone call came in and my dad was crying and I had never seen a man cry before and I was totally freaking out but no one would tell me what was going on and Guitar Friend was bleeding through the kleenex she'd wrapped around her finger while she was trying to clumsily comfort me (even though I had no idea what she was trying to comfort me about) and my mom was nowhere to be found.  It was a mess.  I don't remember being told about my grandfather's passing.  I don't remember much else, just the woman playing guitar with blood running down the palm of her hand and being utterly convinced that I was the only sane one in the room at all given points.

This is what I think about every time I pick up a guitar.  It's probably why I keep putting them down immediately afterward.

Not this time, though.  This time I am going to learn to play the damned thing, even if it does lead to blood and chaos.

(Let's be honest: it'd hardly be the first thing I've done in my life that led to blood and chaos.)