When I was young, my grandparents bought a Wurlitzer upright piano. It was a nut brown color and had a bench seat to match. My grandmother bought me piano guides, and she would pull those out every day and demand I play. My chubby fingers started to learn and I began to play.
The piano sat in the corner of the living room of my grandparents newly bought house. Soon after they bought the piano, my grandfather, though stingy, had two skylights installed in the ceiling above. Because of where the skylights were installed in the living room, a new and nice amount of sunlight filtered in everyday. It's sometimes hard to see people like your grandparents with an imagination, but in this case, I can see my grandfather's imagination overcoming his need to be Third World cheap. I can see him see in his head, his first and as of then, only grandson, sitting with a halo of fresh sunlight, letting his fingers dance freely across the keys, and all the while, a smart and harmonious melody would play out of the top of that piano. He could be proud, and I would be a star.
I played that damn thing for about a year and then I quit. That piano, if anything, in the end became a dust catcher, and after awhile, the piano did glow, but only with a glow of age and centimeters of dust.
Then I grew up a bit, at least in age and size, and my mom got a computer. I had gotten a bit more adventurous, and maybe even slightly artistic. And before the internet is what it is today, while my friends were just using it to steal music and 'lol' on AIM, I thought I'd teach myself how to make the internet. I, in a very 'meta' way, scoured the internet for data on how to build the internet. I taught myself code and language. I learned brackets and the value of caps lock. And slowly I--I don't mean to cheapen this word--built my first website. It was glorious. There were multiple pages and the color scheme, dare I say, was impeccable. I used a frame build, which within weeks was out-of-date, and I masked my formats in tables. Which for all of this, if you dragged your browser's window size a smidge too large, it fucked up the whole look. But still, it was a sight to see and I was proud. I had taught myself something, and with that, had engineered something tangible that the world could see, and at least for myself, I could finally wear that halo that I owed my grandparents. And that piano back home could be redeemed.
Well then came this asshole Stanley, and made me, all throughout, look like a fool. Thanks Stanley. Thanks a lot.
-Remoy