My son recently got a new guitar so the air in our house has rung with sounds that barely resemble chords.

I used to play guitar.  I remember my parents getting me my first guitar when I was thirteen years old.  I had asked for one for Christmas but that was only because I thought that once I had a guitar, I would somehow instinctively know how to use it.

Not only was that the furthest thing from the truth, but learning how to play was, I was sure, a form of torture that some third world warlord had at one time employed.

You see, for the first month or so my fingers were in constant pain because, apparently, to be worthy of playing a guitar, you must first make your fingertips blister.  Then, when you were forced to practice while they were blistered, they bled.

My parents expected me to practice every time they thought I wasn’t doing anything.  It was like the sight of me relaxing made some hormone kick in that required immediate suffering on my part.  I had no idea that when I decided to learn guitar that there would be such a hard personal sacrifice.

I did warn my son of the sacrifice, but he just thought I was a “pansy”.  That’s when I decided that he should indeed learn to play guitar.  After all, if he was never going to go through childbirth, the guitar sacrifice was the only way to build character and avenge the “pansy” slight.  Building immunity to the pain with calluses was kind of like breast-feeding, another character-building event he would never experience.

After a day or two of practicing, every chord I tried to play sounded exactly like the howl of pain I was repressing.  The high chords resembled a cat being skinned, and the lower chords sounded like a cow in labor.

In fact, I could play a whole set of tortured animals:  A pig being branded, a turkey being plucked, tarred and re-feathered, a duck walking on hot coals.  The duck was interesting because it left the listener wondering why the duck did not simply fly over the coals.

My “C” chord was, I think, a rhinoceros running full bore into the rear end of a hippopotamus.  I’m not sure, as I’ve never heard the sound that a hippopotamus makes normally, much less when there is a charging rhinoceros involved.  In fact, I’m not even sure that two are usually found on the same continent.  The sound, however, I remember vividly.

The other day, my son told me that he’s getting better and that he could really make his guitar “sing”.  It sounded more like a “scream” to me but far be it from me to burst his musical bubble.  After all, when I finally developed calluses on my fingertips, I started to get better, too.

At some point, my guitar playing started sounding less like tortured animals and more like a violin with a head cold.  Then I moved on to Tiny Tim with a rubber ukulele.  Finally after a year or so, I started sounding more like something they would allow to accompany the youth choir at my parent’s church.  There were enough youths singing to drown out my guitar.  I’m sure that’s the only reason they allowed me to play.

I used to sing, too.  At thirteen I sounded like an angel, another reason they let me into the choir.  Now, however, I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, and I’m just not willing to pay the price to fix that.  My children have heard so many tortured animal sounds already that they may require therapy.

One good thing that has come from my son learning guitar is that, now, he and I are bonded by identical pain and he will never call me a “pansy” again.

You can reach Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website www.lauraonlife.com for more columns and info about her books.