One day a music teacher walked into my fourth grade classroom at Burbank Elementary in Stockton, carrying a violin and a clarinet. "Your choice", he said. Okay, I'll take the one that kinda looks like a guitar. Thus started my brief career as a violinist.So I played violin for 6 years, fourth thru ninth grade. Youth orchestra, classical music competitions, civic auditorium concerts... I was good, but not gifted. And to deal with the stigma of being an over-six-foot-black-high-school-male violin player, you needed to be gifted.
Such was my thinking when I decided to stop playing this wonderful instrument in order to focus on my cool. I stopped playing, but I never stopped loving classical music. I listen to it everyday. That makes me cool, yes?