Accordions Are Not Cool

accordian_girlMy mother is cleaning out the attic, and dredging up memories that best lie undisturbed until that hoarder’s delight is at long last razed.

“Guess what I found,” she called and crowed to me.

“What.”

“Your accordion!”

Yes. My goddamn accordion,

I’d long dreamed, as a girl, of playing the piano. I’d seen the old black-and-white movies, where a glamorous blonde in an evening gown shimmies to a grand piano, sweeps the audience with a bold, saucy blue set of eyes, and preforms something beautiful by Mozart with her gorgeous long fingers. Instead, when it came to time to torture her children with musical instruments, I was assigned the accordion.

“How come he gets to pick what he wants?” I asked, referring to my brother, who is often referenced among my two sisters as ‘The Christ Child.’ I was told my mother thought he would be good at it.  I got the accordion, because a piano was unrealistic, and too expensive. Also, I suspect she found a used one cheap. I also suspect she was concerned about me turning into something on the increasingly popular and sinful Music Television, available on basic cable. RIP Robert Palmer. Another reason given was that my late uncle, my mother’s brother Allan, who died in Vietnam, had played the accordion. I call bullshit on this. He may have played one getting drunk before shipping out.

It did not help my fabulous unpopularity — pushed along by my home perms and middle-aged secretary’s wardrobe and not being allowed to wear makeup — that I was taking accordion lessons. Imagine strapping that thing on over set of C-cups. My spatial learning disability made the instrument — never, in my opinion, a pleasing-sounding one under the best of circumstances — reminiscent of the cries of a dying seagull. I simply cannot do two different things with two hands while learning a new language — music — at once.

The New York Times had a article this month about how hip accordions are becoming. This is not really happening. You must not read this article or go to any alleged accordion festivals. If you see accordion players -on the subway you must immediately put your headphones — I suggest giant professional over-the-ear ones that block out everything — and crank up the Guns and Roses and remember those of us suffering from accordion-related post-traumatic stress disorder.

My mother asked me if I wanted my old accordion. I told her sure. On my drive from Boston back to New York, I would pull over on the side of I-95, put the cursed thing in the right lane, and wait for a giant tractor-trailer to send it to hell where it belongs.

“I’ll put it back in the back in the attic,” she said.

Photo: Yasuo Kuniyoshi / Flickr

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