Music makes it better

Michael's parents gave him a guitar a couple Christmases ago. And the moment he started strumming, I was so happy to have music in the house again. My electric keyboard hadn't been working well for a while.

The other day our neighbor offered us a piano. A real one. My keyboard had weighted keys, but I still find I don't have a confident enough touch for the real thing. You gotta plunk those things like you mean it.

But I'm not the only one who's happy about the new addition to our home. We were excited for days as we moved furniture around and peeked out our windows at David across the street, taking our piano apart and fixing it all up for us in his garage. He used to be a professional piano tuner, so our hand-me-down piano has been babied along for years. And now it's joined our family at the perfect time, when only one of us is still young enough to want to use it as the skyscrapers for his own production of Spiderman. The rest of us touch it only with love and respect. And even Spidey knows to play with his fingers instead of his elbows or heels. If we had gotten it any sooner, it might have ended up with peanut butter and Cheetos between the keys. But we are mostly 8 and above now. And we promise it will be safe here.

In the words of Paisley and Urban:

Start a band.