Erik is 11 years old and lives in a bungalow in a small Illinois town. He’s all skinned elbows and scabbed knees on a thin frame that hasn’t reached 5 feet yet. Recently, he burned his calf on his bike tire doing stunts, but he didn’t mind because it happened around the time he finally achieved his goal of owning 1,001 baseball cards.
He sometimes wears a Boston Red Sox cap backward and T-shirts from sports teams such as the Detroit Red Wings, Los Angeles Dodgers and his favorite team, the Chicago Cubs.
When I first met Erik, he had never touched a guitar before. I was 46 and had been playing for 36 years. His mother had surprised him at Christmas with a three-quarter-sized nylon-string guitar that appeared too big for his hands. “He’s been bugging me for guitar lessons,” she told me on the phone.
I had never taught guitar before, but I thought back to when I was 11 and taking lessons in the dingy basement of the Fret Shop, a music store in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. This was the ’60s, the height of the folk music craze, when everyone in my neighborhood was listening to Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. Later, as a teenager, I spent Sundays in the audience at Chicago’s Earl of Old Town, trying to steal chords from folk singers Steve Goodman, John Prine and Tom Paxton.
To have the opportunity to offer lessons to an 11-year-old boy felt like the completion of one of life’s circular passages that come around repeatedly in middle age. I wanted to offer Erik a safe harbor and show him the magical possibilities of strings on wood.
I also knew that a musical instrument is a cheap form of therapy. As a scruffy kid running the alleys of the Chicago’s South Side, I had no idea how a guitar would eventually sustain me through divorce, financial woes, illnesses and other bumps the come with living past the age of 50. The ability to play “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” after losing a job or “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” after you sign divorce papers is an unexpected gift.
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Erik didn’t need to know all the complex psychological reasons for learning the guitar. Instead, we would have fun.
During our initial lesson, I taught him the letter name of each string and how to tune a guitar. “Erik, are there any songs you want to learn?” He shrugged his shoulders. I was relieved. I was not too current on the repertoire of Pink, Eminem or Kenny Chesney.
I showed him how to make a D chord and the importance of placing his fingers as close to the fret bar as possible so the string could ring true. His hand bent awkwardly around the guitar neck, and he moaned. “Don’t worry, Erik,” I told him. “This is first time you’ve attempted a D chord. You’ll get it.”
Before the half-hour was up, Erik peeked at a clock above the mantel in the living room. I didn’t mind. I know a young boy’s attention span can only focus in spurts. Still, I wanted to leave him with something inspiring. I launched into a slow, fingerpicking polka version of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” “Whoa,” he said, his eyes wide and lit up.
“This is what we’re working toward, Erik. But you have to practice every day. OK? Even when your fingers hurt.”
“I will,” he promised. And much to my surprise, he did.
During the next six months, I taught him all the major and minor chords with the exception of the pesky F chord, which would require his entire index finger pressing down all six strings on the first fret. He greeted me each Wednesday at the front door and told me some exciting event that occurred in the past week. “I’m going to Milwaukee to see the home run derby!” I usually teased him about the Cubs’ woes, and he in turn wondered why on earth I root for the White Sox.
I won’t exaggerate my influence with Erik. I’m just one more adult in a network of parents, grandparents, teachers, librarians and coaches in this farming community of 5,000. I have 30 minutes a week to teach guitar and offer one example in life’s endless possibilities.
“Look at my hands,” Erik told me excitedly one night. “My left hand is longer than my right. … It’s stretched out from guitar.”
“Just wait until we get to the jazz chords,” I told him. “You’ll have mitts like Shaquille O’Neal.”
After several months, I found a simple piece of classical guitar tablature. The composition, written by 19th-century Italian guitarist Matteo Carcassi, is simply titled “Air.” The piece is tricky for a beginner and requires Erik to connect four two-note chords over an expanse of five frets. We worked on it for several lessons with mixed results, but one day he nailed it. “See, I’ve been practicing,” he said, beaming.
I called his mom in from the kitchen and asked Erik to play the piece again. He flubbed a couple of notes, but it was much smoother than I would have expected. “Amazing,” his mom said.
Erik looked outside. He heard his pals performing wheelies on their bikes and the carnival notes of a neighborhood ice cream vendor. Two hours of daylight were left — an eternity in a boy’s life.
“See you next week, Erik,” I said, packing up. “Practice hard. And stay out of trouble.”
But he was already out the door, on to the next thing.
Stephen J. Lyons is the author of five books of essays and journalism.
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