2004-07-11 - 9:01 p.m.
Adventures in Campland: Day 21
I could accept that the Ozreem hate me.
I could accept that the bathroom hates me.
But my guitar???
I brought my guitar to camp in the that I would have free time in which to play it as well as free time in which to have it tuned by one of the camp songleaders. Yeah, right, says the guitar. Take your pick, you can't have both. And since I can't stand to play an offkey guitar, I usually end up with neither.
Very off-putting.
Especially since I wouldn't have this problem if I could tune my own guitar. That would solve the problem. But NO. I CAN'T. Why? BECAUSE MY FINGERS HATE ME TOO.
Aaaaaargh.
So on Friday night, after a week of being the proud owner of a really, REALLY out-of-tune guitar (and proud babysitter of a guitar-worshipping and extremely tone-deaf almost two-year-old--I mean, could YOU resist a pair of baby blue, puppy-dog eyes and a forlorn "Gita? Gita? Gita?"), I finally found the time to get it tuned. That time just happened to be past Elsinora's bedtime, but I was getting pretty desperate. The nice songleader tuned the guitar, and I slept in the next morning full of happy, well-tuned guitar dreams.
Dream on, Elsinora.
First thing the next morning, I happily took down my newly tuned guitar and plucked at the strings.
You guessed it.
One string was badly out of tune ALREADY.
Aaaaaargh.
My mind was already filled with unhappy visions of sheepishly seeking out the nice songleader again. "It's out of tune already? What did you do to it?"
Not a happy vision. So I took desperate action.
I tried to tune the G-string myself.
I prepared to do heroic battle with my evil fingers. I armed myself with my good ear and my beautiful pitchpipe, and I blew into the slot marked G, confident of victory.
"Charge!" it wasn't.
There came a dying cow bellow. There came a dying mouse shriek.
There came silence.
I could have sworn my fingers were laughing at me.
I blew again. The same result. So I tried the A slot. A pure, sweet A note sounded. I tried the D slot. Crystal clear. I tried every other note on the pitchpipe. Perfect pitch.
I tried the G again.
Bellow. Sputter. Shriek.
Aaaaaargh.
One weapon down, one to go. I had to rely solely on my ear, very difficult when my fingers were all screaming "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" style insults at my poor ear. But good ear triumphed over evil fingers. By finger-picking various chords and playing "one of these notes is not like the others, one of these notes just doesn't belong", I managed to tune the string.
SO HA!
I know it's a minor victory. (No pun intended.) I can already hear my fingers calling, "You can't win! Next time it'll be TWO STRINGS!", but I don't care. I won. I won. I repeat, I WON. Game over. Na na na boo boo. Na na na na nyaa nyaa.
At least until tomorrow, when the guitar falls out of tune again.
Aaaaaargh.
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