I may have been 20 years old, but I was still fueled by teenage angst.
We’ll call him Unicorn.
(I call him this because once I was unboxing stickers and prizes for my students, including several unicorn stickers. He said excitedly, “I like unicorns! Am I allowed to say that?” I assured him that he was indeed allowed to share his love for unicorns and gave him a sticker).
I first met Unicorn in a college dance class. He was kind, attractive, and a fun dance partner. It was only a few weeks before I developed a massive crush on him.
Towards the end of the semester, we were talking about work, and I told him I was a piano teacher. His eyes lit up, “I would love to learn piano!” he exclaimed. It didn’t help that I liked him already, but I am always thrilled to talk to people who are passionate about music.
Without giving it much thought, I offered to teach him piano classes for free. The teenage angst part of my brain felt this was a perfect opportunity to be able to spend time with him after the dance class was over.
My later attempts to escape the friend zone failed, but I felt it would be morally wrong to stop teaching him piano classes just because he wasn’t interested in me romantically.
Flash forward to now. We have become good friends and Unicorn is a highly dedicated piano student. He is often too hard on himself, and I have to remind him to take things one step at a time. But he is starting to truly connect with music. When he plays music, it is as though the song is flowing through his fingertips and the piano is an extension of him rather than a foreign instrument.
Although I am teaching him for free, he is not the only one who has benefitted from these piano lessons. He will give me rides home from work, which saves me an hour on the city bus. I have used him as a guinea pig for a new piano curriculum before I introduced it to my other students (spoiler alert: it was not a good curriculum).
There are only two problems now. One is the possibility of someone demanding, “how come Unicorn gets free classes and not me??” and I would have to submit myself to the mortifying ordeal of explaining that the reason Unicorn gets free piano classes is because I had a crush on him a year ago. The second problem is, I have to hope that Unicorn never finds this blog.
The moral of the story is, do not give free piano classes to people you have a crush on. Or perhaps, do not let your inner teenager make decisions for you. These are definitely good lessons. Yet, I cannot say I regret my choices, only that the reasons behind my choices were a smidge illogical. Perhaps the true moral of the story is, even when things don’t go exactly how you want, or when you make decisions without thinking things over, good can still come out of it. Through every pathway you take in life, there are opportunities to grow, learn, and build meaningful connections with fellow humans.
