MY KEYBOARD

I wanted an electronic keyboard, so I trolled the Internet for prospects. To my surprise I found one, just the one I wanted. And yes, I will admit that I was a little bit defensive when David said, “Really, it’s just a toy for you.” And yes, I’ll confess to temporarily forgetting a few guilty memories when he sighed and said, “Looks like we won’t have to plan anything for your two weeks summer vacation.” And yes, I did silently blame him for making these comments while aiding and abetting, which is to say that he drove me in the pouring rain all the way to the outskirts of the city to buy it, and said it didn’t matter to him how much money it cost. All he wanted was my happiness. Marriage, after all, is a complicated institution.
Okay, so maybe I can see why he called it a toy rather than an essential item. I really didn’t need a keyboard, given that I have a piano, and a guitar, and an accordion, and two little flutes from foreign countries and three drums and a rainstick and a tiny harmonica bearing a metal plate that says Grand Old Opry, Nashville Tennessee. It’s not as if there wouldn’t be any music in the house if I didn’t buy an electronic keyboard. And okay, so maybe I did get some new electronic device several times at Christmas, and maybe I was a little reclusive for a week or two every time this happened. But it couldn’t have been all that bad. Otherwise, why would he have been so accommodating about getting this new (second-hand) keyboard?
Still, marriage is a complicated institution, a dance of give and take. So I have been talking about using the keyboard at church after I get really good at operating it, which makes it seem like something a little more useful than a toy, and I try not to get so carried away with its 600 tones and five-song six-track memory that I forget to make supper. I’ve done pretty well at this too. In two weeks I’ve only forgotten supper a couple of times, and stayed up until 2:00 one time. And I’ve tried not to bother him when he’s on the toilet with questions about what the screen says and I‘ve tried not to ask him to read the instruction manual to me during the few minutes of free time that he generally devotes to the newspaper.
But it’s hard to do these things because I am having a lot of fun with that keyboard, even though my back is hurting so much these days that it’s hard to have fun at anything, , which is probably why he mistakenly thought it was a toy.