The Color Purple

I have a four year-old granddaughter whose favorite color is purple. She has a purple bedroom, purple coats, purple sweaters, and purple sneakers. If she could make it happen, everything in her world would be purple.

She also has demonstrated an interest in music. No visit to our house is complete until she sits down at my keyboard and bangs on the keys and pushes all of the instrument buttons.

In retirement, I decided that one of the ways I would try and keep my mind active and occupied was to learn to the play the piano.

There is a music gene in our family but I didn’t get it.

My sister, Mary, got it and took piano lessons and learned to play beautifully throughout her childhood. I can remember how happily our father gave up his Sunday afternoon professional football games so he could sit in an auditorium and listed to ten or twenty children he didn’t know play a recital piece before my sister came on. If he was lucky, he only missed the first half before he could listen to her and sneak out.

My daughter, Meghan, Claire’s mother, got the music gene. She took lessons in grade school and middle school. Her teacher was preparing her for competition when she was tragically killed in an automobile accident. Meghan was devastated and her interest in playing seemed to abate.

I took lessons from one of the nuns I had in parochial grade school for a number of months until the lumps on my head and the mild concussion I suffered during the lessons allowed me to stop taking them.

Claire has heard me practice during her weekend visits and has pronounced my music as “yucky.”

Despite this candid appraisal of my talent, I decided to get her a keyboard of her own to see if it would whet her appetite for learning to play.

Naturally, it had to be purple.

I went to Google and searched for a purple keyboard. To my amazement there was a 49 key purple electric keyboard with a microphone offered on Amazon which could arrive in time for her birthday. I place the order.

The day before her birthday, I received an e-mail from Amazon notifying me that the item was “backordered” and would arrive sometime between late October and late November. I cancelled the order.

I went back online and found the same purple keyboard offered by Sears. I placed the order and was provided with a U.S. Postal Service tracking number and an arrival date of two weeks later. It would be after her birthday but close enough for a late present.

I should have realized that I was in trouble when I entered the tracking number on the Postal Service tracking site and was informed that it didn’t recognize the number. I waited in vain and when the two weeks expired, I contacted Sears. They told me that the purple key board was lost in the mail but that they would arrange to have another shipped.

A couple of days later Sears e-mailed me that their supplier was out of purple keyboards and they would provide me with a refund.

Undaunted, I went back to Google and found a music company in California that had the same purple keyboard. I went to the web site and ordered one. They sent me an e-mail acknowledging my order and a delivery date in ten days.

On the twelfth day I e-mailed the company and told them I had not received the purple keyboard. They asked for twenty-four hours to review the order after which they informed me that my credit card had been declined and the order cancelled.

I immediately wondered, loudly, how I ever would have known that my credit card had been declined and the order cancelled if they were never going to inform me of that had I not inquired. Terri told me that she couldn’t handle hearing anymore about my travails trying to order the purple keyboard.

II decided to keep my thoughts and frustrations to myself.

I stewed for a couple of days and began exploring keyboards that weren’t purple but lying in bed at night I resolved that a keyboard that wasn’t purple just wouldn’t do.

I contacted the music company in California and asked if I had given them the wrong credit card number. They read me the information on the order and I had not. I explained to them that the card had never been declined and asked them to place the order again.

Two days later, they sent me an e-mail with a delivery date and a tracking number. I waited another day and went to the U.S. Postal Service website, inputted the tracking number and held my breath. The purple keyboard had been shipped and was enroute!

Several days later the package arrived.

We went to my daughter’s home that weekend and presented it to Claire. She was very excited about the fact it was purple. She plugged it in and began to bang on the keys and push the other instrument buttons.

My daughter said it was the loudest keyboard she had ever heard.

I pointed out that it had a volume control button with an arrow on it that you could hold down to reduce the volume.

She pressed it and said to me, “It doesn’t work, Dad.”

“I can send it back for a replacement but we might not get another one until she’s ten years-old,” I said.

Meghan said, “Okay, Dad. We’ll keep it but when we come to visit for the weekend I’m sending her into your bedroom in the morning to play it to wake you up.”

I just hope Claire learns a couple of tunes I like by then.