I started piano lessons when I was 4. I took lessons until I started band. After that, I still played piano at home and at church, and sometimes at school when our band/choir/drama director was out. I finished my piano profiecency requirement in undergrad a full year before I was scheduled to graduate (some people are frantically trying to pass the Friday before graduation – it was tough). I’ve played Bach, Beethoven, Chopin. I’m no Amadeus, but I get the job done. I’m an effecient player, partially because I have small hands and can’t possibly play everything as scored and partially because I want to get out of the singers’ way, if I’m accompanying. I’m familiar with a piano, I guess is what I’m saying.
I also worked in a music store for a while. I saw the used pianos that came in on trades and heard the techs talk about what was wrong with them; knowing I played a little, the salesperson-by-day-gig-musician-by-night would often call me over, ask me to play on a certain piano and point out what was wrong with it while it was waiting to be fixed. An out-of-regulation instrument isn’t too hard to recognize, if you know what to look, or more accurately feel, for.
Flashback to that first booster meeting, the one before school started.
I had already been working in the classroom, trying to make it my own and get it ready for that first day. That process had also involved working in the music library and picking out initial teaching pieces to work on the first few weeks of school, as I established a baseline of ability in these new-to-me students. Picking music requires playing the piano.
Sidebar – remember when I said that my room was like a sauna in the fall (and spring)? Have you ever seen a piano in a sauna? Do you know why? Pianos are made mostly of wood. Wood and humidity don’t play nicely together. Also, in the winter, my room alternated between t-shirt overly warm and 55 degrees and DRY as the Sahara. Just like wooden doors or door frames in your house, piano keys and the wooden parts that move them expand and contract in reaction to heat and humidity and they STICK. This results in a piano that has a stiff action some days and an irritatingly loose action other days, sometimes all in the same day in the different registers.
The baby grand piano in my room had once been a beautiful instrument. I could still feel how nicely it must have played when it was selected. But the finish on the lid was totally dulled, there were huge scratches across the top and when I popped the lid to take a peek at the inside, I found no less than 3 pencils rolling around, trash, paper, candy wrappers and mouse poop. I couldn’t understand for the life of me why ANYONE would put a pricey, fine-tuned instrument in a high school classroom. Specifically, a classroom that had staggered floors and had very little floor-level real estate.
Do you remember the part about how my room was in the basement? Why anyone would spend close to $10,000 on an instrument that they can’t roll into their performance space? Meanwhile, there was a rickety spinnet piano upstairs in the other gymnatorium that I had to use for concerts. It lived in the athletic equipment closet, had dead keys that didn’t sound when struck, keys that had been ripped out and sounded like it had spent most of its past life in a honky tonk. If you had that much cash to blow on instruments, why wouldn’t you buy something that would be resistant to heat and humidity? Or something portable to the performance space? My mind immediately screamed, this room needs a digital piano. They were getting better all the time and would be a much better investment for this environment and they were reasonable in price – for less than what this piano cost, they could have had 2 digitals, one for the classroom and one for the gymnatorium, and still had money left over.
The Boosters asked what my fundraising goals were for the year, I indicated that the piano needed replacing, as it was in need of some serious repairs and the repairs wouldn’t end as long as the piano remained in this uncontrolled climate. I indicated that the instruments I was looking at would be much more sustainable over time, and wouldn’t require tuning, an expense the school wouldn’t pay for and the Boosters had to or it didn’t get done.
The Boosters looked at me aghast and said, but that piano is only a few years old! And it cost A LOT OF MONEY! It was supposed to last for YEARS AND YEARS! I tried to kindly explain how uncontrolled shifts in heat and humidity prematurely age an instrument, but they didn’t want to hear it. I was obviously young, cocky and really knew nothing about anything, it was written all over their faces.
I learned later that all that damage had been done in less than 3 years’ time. 3 years.
The Church Lady had been a pianist primarily, and had petitioned the Boosters for a new instrument. When the Boosters & students had raised a substantial sum of money, she went to the local music store (the same one where I used to work) and bought the most expensive piano the Boosters could afford. Later, the salesperson told me that he tried to talk to her about the digitals and she wouldn’t hear of it. She was getting a good piano, as she was the one who had to play on it all day, and on the Boosters’ dime.
The Boosters again thought I was young and stupid and were exasperated that they had to again raise money for an instrument.
I tried to be sympathetic and worked with the school to try to use Choir budget monies for the repairs instead. The piano was technically school property as soon as it was delivered, but the school wouldn’t authorize any repairs; that’s what the Boosters were for. The Boosters said that they donated the instrument, it was the least the school could do to maintain it.
So I played it for 8 hours a day and started getting regular massages on my arms and back from the strain. And I continued to try to play by the rules and try to work through the process of getting it fixed. My student pianists complained that certain songs hurt their hands; I immediately made them get up and I would take over for them. I wasn’t letting one of them get a performance injury from that piano. Besides – I had been playing for nearly 20 years, had never gotten a single note on my form at the keyboard from any of the numerous teachers or professors who had watched me play. My form would protect me.
Fast forward 2 years, a week before spring concert.
Still have the piano. Still have problems with the regulation. Still at a stalemate as to who should fix it, although, by now, most of those Boosters’ kids have quit (see how I killed Disney or a future post about student accounts), or graduated, or the parents just didn’t want to do it anymore. I don’t know why, they never gave me the courtesy of feedback. They just quit coming.
I’m getting 2 hours of massage therapy a month and still my hands and forearms feel like they’re going to fall off after a serious rehearsal. One day, my top choir was rehearsing a Mozart piece. I’m at the keyboard and the last page, I just totally fall apart. I’m missing notes all over the place and a few of my kids who play piano give me a hard time about it. I start to say that I don’t know what happened at the end and apologize when I realize that I can’t feel the last 3 fingers in my right hand. They are totally numb.
Off to worker’s comp I go.
Diagnosis: acute bilateral tendonitis of the wrists
Treatment: rest and electro-something treatments that force steriods into my wrists for 8 weeks (over summer vacation)
Declared cured in August (after 2 1/2 months of not playing the piano). I ask my doctor how I can be declared fit to work again when he’s only seen progress when I’ve not been at work. He ignores me and sends the release paperwork to my school. He tells me that I’m not going to get out of my job and I’m fine. School #1 proceeds to treat me like a leper because I had the audacity to get hurt.
Ten years later, I’m still not fine. I’ve paid thousands out of pocket for massage therapy, and will have to continue to do so. I can barely carry a gallon of milk into the house. I can’t open a jar by myself. I can’t grip anything of any weight. I’ve adapted my life around having no ability to carry anything in my hands. I can try, for short periods of time, but if I hold anything for too long, my hands go numb and I lose my grip and I drop whatever I’m trying to hold on to.*
Hardest of all, I can’t hold my neices and nephews for more than a few minutes at a time, not even long enough to rock them to sleep or give them a bottle. When my hands start to go numb, I’m terrified I’ll drop them and give them back. I tried again about a year ago – I was sitting down, holding my youngest nephew and the little guy fell asleep in my arms. I didn’t want to disturb him, and I was loving his little baby smell, so I held him through his nap, supporting most of his weight on my body. That night, my arms throbbed so badly that advil, ice packs and alcohol couldn’t take the edge off of the pain. I just propped myself up in a chair, ice packs covering my arms and sobbed, apologizing to my husband. I couldn’t do anything more than typing for days and my arms were tender to the touch for nearly a week afterwards. Every time I got bumped, I cried and apologized to my husband. If I can’t hold a baby through one nap, how could I ever hope to take care of my own children? It wasn’t fair to him and I was so sorry that I was broken.
I missed my last staff meeting of the year to go to my first workman’s comp appointment – it was their first available. At the staff meeting, they handed out mugs to all the teachers as an appreciation gift for their hard work that year. When I turned in my doctor’s excuse as my reason for missing the staff meeting, my principal read it, mumbled, ‘well, I guess whatever you work out with [local music store] for the piano is fine then…’ and dismissed me from his office. [ETA: This principal will later be referred to Principal Fuhrer.]
He never even gave me my mug. Bastard.
*For those of you who know I’m a knitter and are confused here, when I learned to knit, I learned from someone with a repetitive stress injury. I cradle my needles, but don’t grip them – this is the only way I’m able to knit at all. I’ve pretty much given up crochet because not gripping the hook isn’t an option and isn’t worth the pain it causes.
Donita Westman 