Guitars And The New Generation Gap
Pardon us while we climb out of this generation gap we fell into recently. It may take us a while – there’s nothing that can make you feel so old as realizing your youngest child has come to a point of mature judgment in life. Here’s how it happened to us.
Our youngest son, who’s 15, has been surprising us all year. First, back in January, he signed up for a music class in guitar at school. We confess we were tempted at first to add extra insulation to his bedroom and pretend it was his new recording studio, but we managed to restrain ourselves. Then our son surprised by showing a heretofore unsuspected aptitude for playing the guitar. We can only surmise that his newfound talent spurred him to keep up with daily music exercises, running up and down scales on the guitar strings as if they were the old playset in the backyard.
By the time school rolled around again in the fall, our son’s diligence had so impressed his father that dear old Dad decided the boy deserved his own guitar (he’d been borrowing one from his teacher). Knowing nothing about guitars, Dad began perusing auction sites and music vendors online looking for a good electric guitar for sale. Unfortunately, not only did Dad not know a good guitar when he saw one, most of the ads he found wanted a small fortune for a whole guitar kit.
In order to avoid disappointing our teen-ager, we stayed mum about the Great Guitar Quest. What we didn’t count on was that although he never heard his parents when they called him to do a chore, his super-hearing kicked just as we were discussing how to acquire a guitar for him. This knowledge set off a teen-age version of the ecstatic dance done by a certain cartoon beagle when his round-headed master brings out a full supper dish.
We finally got him to calm down long enough to talk things over with us. After all, there was no more reason to keep the conversation secret. His dad began by setting ground rules: Son had to maintain his grades, do his chores, and most of all, justify the investment by keeping up with his lessons and rehearsals. Naturally our budding guitarist readily agreed to every condition.
Then Dad asked what kind of rock guitar our son wanted, with the understanding that it might be a while before we could get up the cost. That’s the point at which we got the shock.
Our son turned very serious and explained that he’d been learning classical guitar, so he wanted to start out with an electric guitar that was suited for classic playing. He mentioned several models his teacher had recommended, such as a takamine acoustic electric guitar.
Then after a moment, he added we also might consider the ibanez acoustic electric guitar.
You could have blown us over with a feather! Here we middle-aged Generation X-ers were contemplating our sprout turning into a god of rock, and instead he’s preparing to become the Andres Segovia of his generation!
Yes, friends, there’s still a generation gap, and we fell right into it. See you when we climb back out.
Tags: electric acoustic guitar, generation gap, parenting, teenagers
