Now, I am not exactly sure what this story says about me as a child, or my parents as, well, parents, but it now gets told at every family Christmas. The “genius” parents and the non-observant child strike again. (For the record, this is like the only story that I can be mistaken for non-observant in).

Everybody goes through that one point in their life where they think they can play a musical instrument. Right? Well, I certainly did, and actually, so did my brother. We’re super weird, so it could just be us, but for now we’ll call this “normal.”

When I was six years old I asked for a violin for Christmas. I begged and begged and begged, and even threw out the causal threat that my Christmas would be ruined if I did not get a violin. Simply ruined. (That makes me sound like a brat, but I promise I was always agrateful child–at least five days of the week).

I wanted this violin to make me the next big hit. My 6-year-old brain thought that this would only take a few days, a practice here and there, and the next thing you know, I would be up on a stage wowing people with these magnificent musical skills that I just happened to pick up. Why the violin? Honestly, who knows…

Christmas morning came and they pulled through. Between Santa and my parents, somehow this beautiful violin was sitting on my couch. It was mine. All mine. This violin was bought for me. (Or so I thought.)

I was beyond thrilled. I mean, I didn’t even know how to hold it, but I had full faith that this was going to be my new thing. Yeah, that god-awful screeching lasted a good week or so and I was done with the violin. I just couldn’t do it anymore, so I tucked it under my bed for safe keeping. I knew it would always be there if I ever needed it–you know, for hidden talent day at school or something.

Well, five years later when we were packing up my room to move, I was really counting on my violin under the bed to distract me from deciding what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to give away, but the violin failed me. It wasn’t there.

Losing things has never been in my cards. I don’t lose anything–absolutely nothing! I was shocked that I had misplaced this expensive instrument until my mom revealed to me that just five weeks after I opened the violin, it was actually given back. “Given back” as in returned from its lease. The violin was never mine; it was kind of mine. And by "kind of," I mean it was rented for a great and memorable Christmas morning.

These parenting tricks must come with time and although I didn’t think it was too funny at the time, I cannot wait to do this to my children. I can only imagine what was going through their heads when I actually didn’t take it up. My Dad was probably thinking, “Oh thank God we don’t have to buy that thing.” Good thing it only took me five years to put all of that together. Next time, I’ll get there faster (hopefully).