June 8, 2022:

Misery over what I loved.

Forced to sight read "On Top of Old Smokey" from a Mel Bay manual of trivial bullshit.

"I want to play Beatles," I told the man, although what I meant was Chuck Berry. He skipped ahead to "Michelle", a song I loathed then and detest to this day.

I've kept the guitar sixty years. Vox "Serenader" parlor acoustic with incorrect intonation, that is which can't be tuned, as a result of which my mother the college music major declared me tone deaf.

Incompetent teacher, incompetent parent, although it was four further decades before I drew that lesson.