Back in the summer before my sophomore year of high school, I had to attend my school's marching band camp. This was when I still enjoyed playing in the band. I kind of despise it now, but whatever. The band camp was composed of five days, Monday to Friday, from nine in the morning to nine in the evening. However, on the Thursday of band camp, practice would end early, and there would be some sort of fun activity to do afterward. Well, I'm not going to write about the fun activities that happened afterward, I'm going to write about them beforehand. Before the activities, there was this older guy, just sitting at the piano, playing away. It sounded amazing to me, so I just approached him. He asked me to name any song, and he could play it on piano, effortlessly and beautifully, and in which he did. I couldn't help but feel as if that was the coolest thing I had ever seen. From that day on, I would put in several hours a day on my little toy keyboard in my room to practice getting as good as he was on the piano. I played for long hours at a time, and loudly enough, to where I was certain it had to be annoying others. One day, later in the school year, my friend sent me this piece to learn. It was a hard piece, but I wanted to follow through with it. I practiced that song so much, every day. I would even practice on the school piano, where everyone could hear. Soon after, covid had struck, and I was locked in my room for several months. I took advantage of that time to get better at the hard piece. Then, when school finally opened back up, I wasn't allowed to touch the piano. But while the teacher wasn't looking, I hopped on that thing and went away at it. Others were saying “don't, the teacher will get mad”, but carpe diem, ya know. I went at it, and it sounded so good. Even another kid approached me afterward asking what song it was. I felt so cool. It's been about two or three years since then, and I've come a long way. To think, that if I never watched that guy play the piano at band camp that one time, this big aspect of my life and personality would probably just not be here for me. Unfortunately, that guy did resort to a life of drugs and ended up failing out of college. He's doing well now, though. Hooray!