Tony wanted to work in his garden, so I went over to see Kinky. After a fun hike with The Friedmans, we were sitting in his rocking chairs, on his front porch, talking and laughing about this and that. "Kinky, I did the dumbest thing the other day and I guess it is because I am getting old or dumber."
"What happened?"
"Friday evening, Tony and I were over at Carol's ranch, visiting with her. I had brought my banjo with me, because Carol wanted me to teach her how to play it. I let her strum it and mess around on it first, then she handed it back to me and asked me to show her how to finger-pick the banjo."
"Could she do it?" Kinky asked, as he puffed away on his cigar.
"Now wait and let me finish telling you my story. I was showing her how I pick my banjo and telling her, 'First, use your thumb and then use your index and then use your middle finger and then start all over again. Like your thumb is first, your index finger is two and your middle finger is three.' Then I started showing her and counting one, two, three, one, two... as I finger-picked my banjo."
"Was she able to do it?"
"I'm almost done, Kinky. Carol tried doing it, but of course, she was having trouble trying to do it, because it was her very first lesson. Now, comes my dumb senior moment when I tried to give her a helpful tip. I said, 'Carol, sometimes when I am finger-picking on my guitar, mandolin or banjo I stabilize my fingers' position by putting my little thumb down on the top of my instrument."
Kinky burst out laughing and said, "Little thumb?"
"Yes. The minute that I said my little thumb instead of little finger the three of us burst out laughing. After Carol had finally quit laughing about it, she joked, "Well, I may not have learned how to play the banjo today, but I did learn that I have two thumbs on each hand."
"That's a good one, Nance."
"After she said that, I held up my hand and said, "I give your banjo lesson today a two thumbs up. Like this."
Y'all have a great evening!"
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