Fact 4

I’ve always tried to be a musical person.

I took piano lessons as a little kid, but didn’t stick with it. Later in life I tried to teach myself again, and have improved to a degree. As a missionary for the LDS Church, I decided that playing the piano could be a good skill to have, so right before I left, I decided to take a crash course in playing piano again.

I managed to learn enough to play the basic 4-part hymns in the church hymnbook, and I still have the hymnbook I used to carry with me on my mission that has a post-it note in the front with the list of songs I knew how to play. Thumb through the book and you’ll find pages that have a red circle around the hymn number - that means I can play that song. Being able to play those songs came in handy several times in church meetings where no one else could play.

In middle school I was given the choice of playing in the band, or one semester of choir. I chose to play the trumpet, and have been ever since. I don’t play that as much now, but I still get ‘Trigger’ out every now and then. (Yes, I named my horn after Roy Roger’s horse. I still don’t know why.)

In high school I decided to tackle the guitar. For Christmas one year, I received an electric guitar, but no amplifier. The amp came for my birthday a few days later. As I like to tell people, I can play just enough guitar to embarrass myself, but still keep myself entertained.

Give me about 5-10 minutes with just about instrument, and I’ll at least be able to pick out the theme to the Flintstones. And for some reason, I can’t put a guitar down until I’ve at least done the intro to ‘Stray Cat Strut’, or the first few bars of ‘Summertime Blues’.