My long, off-topic story

I have finally managed to succeed in my New Year resolution. To learn something new! I know that sounds weird for a New Year resolution. But hey, you can make up anything resolution you want as long as you can hold it! But learning something new didn’t include studies from school. It included learning art or doing hobbies. I feel talented because I have learned the guitar this year. Although this year felt like a low budget disaster movie, I had learned something new, something… musical!

My name is Joshua Vinton. And I love to play the guitar. I have always been interested in music. I always thought of the guitar as the “cool” instrument. But the way I got this guitar has a deep story behind it. 

I went to India in the summer because we had to go to my Uncle’s wedding. But Covid-19 had started its death loop around the world. So most of the countries went into lockdown. I had nothing to do there. I usually wrote stories for 3-4 hours a day. But, I was kind of getting bored by writing stories constantly. So I decided to try something new. I decided, why not try playing an instrument. 

Luckily my uncle had a guitar which he didn’t use anymore. So I took it out. And looked up videos on how to play the guitar. I always practiced the guitar for 1 hour every day. And I become good at it. My Uncle’s wedding couldn’t happen because of Covid-19 and we went back to the U.S. because it got postponed for 2 more months. Now the wedding was on December 1st. 

When we reached our home in the U.S. I signed up for a guitar tutor who taught me the basics of the guitar. I had to agree that learning by a teacher in front of you is much better than learning it from an app. Believe me, I have had the experience.

Learning online in India was certainly a pain. But now, I thought my accuracy would be better!

I had to agree that learning in-person helped my accuracy. Before the chords were a bit dull. Now the voice of the chords came out perfectly. I even learned more chords such as F and G sharp. I loved playing the guitar. And this was my New Year resolution! To learn something new. I kept going to the guitar tutor. 

One song I liked on the guitar was Gratitude by Amin Toofani. It’s a fast song and Amin has played the whole song. That song is the best to play on the guitar but is also the hardest. At least for me.

But anyway, my Uncle’s wedding was on December 1st. So since I was learning the guitar. I decided to learn a song to play at the wedding. So I asked the guitar tutor if he could suggest any songs for the wedding. Luckily he was Indian too and knew Indian songs. So he suggested some songs and I noted them down. I told my parents about the idea of playing the song at the wedding. My mom said that we couldn’t carry the guitar to India. I told her we could use the guitar we used at my Uncle’s house. She said “fine” and I asked her which song to choose. She thought about it for a while and said, play the song “ Mere Sapno Ki Rani.” 

I listened to the song for some while. And I figured out that this song was easy to play. 

But I let it go for a while. Because we had tested in school. It was to see how much we had learned this quarter. We had 3 days to study. I had to study hard for this one. Because it counted as 25% in all of our grades. And that was an immense part of our grade. We had to go to India 2 weeks after the testing. I was going to be absent during my trip to India. So I had to do my best.

I didn’t want to cheat on today’s test but I wasn’t able to study. My parents decided to invite people to our house for dinner. And that was just the days before the examination. And I hadn’t studied the day before that because I didn’t feel like it. I was kind of screwed. But I mostly remembered most of the stuff while the teacher was explaining. I didn’t want to cheat. So I did as best as I could. The test results came after a week. I had scored a moderate score. But I wasn’t in the top scorers. I was usually the top scorer in the quarterly testing. But I guess it was fine. At least I didn’t fail!

I practiced my guitar whenever I got free time. My brother was preparing for a dance. And my parents had to do theirs and my brothers and also learn their dance. I had learned to sing and play the song on the guitar simultaneously. I was all set. All left on my to-do list was to pack all of my stuff. It took me one day to pack all of my stuff. I didn’t have that much stuff. It was all just clothes. I just had to throw the clothes in the suitcase.

Finally, it was time. We had to wake up at 4 a.m. for the flight. Our airport was 30 minutes away. I took all my stuff to the car and we all headed out to the airport. The airport was crowded, which we didn’t expect because of Covid-19. We maintained a social distance between everyone. Our flight was at 6. Our check-in was done in 30 minutes. We had about an hour left before our flight to San Francisco. I played video games during that 1 hour and our number was called to board the flight. 

Our flight was 1 hour 45 minutes long. That 1 hour 45 minutes felt like a whole day. Because my dad said I couldn’t play video games during the flight. There was 95% battery left. But I don’t know why he didn’t want me to play. We also had chargers.

After our flight to San Francisco, we had to wait out 4 hours before our next flight. Our next flight was to Delhi, India and it was a 15-hour long span. We ate pizza at the airport, cake, and whatnot. But waiting 4 hours was a pain. But we eventually got through it.

We were on the flight to India. I was super excited. 

This flight was very long. But for some reason, it felt like this flight was shorter than the San Francisco one. I barely slept. Maybe 4 hours at max. It felt like a 2-hour flight. Ok. Maybe that was an exaggeration but it felt short!

The flight landed when it was daylight in India. My uncle came to pick us up. We had a flight to the U.P. which was in India. Uhh! I was tired of traveling by air.

We had some McDonalds and just chilled. My mom went shopping in some stores. All I needed was my iPad! I needed entertainment. 

Well, I played an hour after we had to board another flight. At this point, I couldn’t even say anything. I was silent that whole 1-hour flight. When we reached U.P., we took all of our luggage and 2 cars came. One to carry our luggage ( Yes, that’s how much luggage we had.) and another one to carry us. When we finally reached my uncle’s place the first thing I did after taking a bath and brushing my teeth was sleep. I slept for a good one hour. Good thing we had bought all of our wedding clothes in the U.S.A.

Because my Uncle got his wedding clothes from New Delhi. And he would have to go there again for the finalization of his clothes. The wedding day was getting closer and closer. And I still hadn’t practiced my guitar in weeks. So I asked my uncle to take his guitar out.

He was confused. He said that he had donated the guitar because it was of no use to him.

That had freaked me out. And I told mom about this situation. She said that she and dad had to go get some wedding stuff anyway. So I could come with her and dad and see if I could buy a guitar temporarily. I went to this musical shop but the owner said that the guitars were out of stock. I went to a few other shops and there were no guitars. I was panicking because I didn’t want all of that practice to go to waste.

I asked if we could order it. But my dad said that shipping could take a week because of Covid-19. I asked what about Amazon Prime? 

He said that would work but we don’t have it, only your uncle does. 

I, without rethinking it, said, “ I guess I won’t be playing the guitar then.” They told me some motivational comments but I just told them to drop me off at home. My parents still had to finish their work. So I had to come with them anyway. I did nothing there, just sat.

It was a long day. It was nighttime at 5:30. And I just felt like sleeping. Once we came home, we prepared for the wedding.

The wedding was in 1 week. We had some relatives come home that week for the wedding as well. And that week went fast pretty fast.

So if you have heard the “Big Fat Indian Wedding,” here’s why. There are about 32 functions for the entire wedding. And four important functions of the wedding. Turmeric, henna, engagement, and the wedding itself.

Those functions went super long as well. For the wedding itself, we had to stay up the whole night!

But guys, guess what!

I did get to play my guitar. A day before the engagement, my dad gave me a guitar. It looked very new so he probably bought it from someone temporarily. I practiced for 3 hours straight. And at the engagement. I played terrifically! People were also dancing during my performance. 

And that was how my New Year resolution and 2020 ended. You know, this year wasn’t so bad at all!. It was ok…

And I know this “Trip to India” story went a little off-topic. You guys all probably slept halfway through it. And yes I was typing and narrating the story to you at the same time. You know, I think I should try writing short stories like this one. 

But some people in the comment boxes are gonna cry over it and tell me not to!

But it’s fine. I’ll keep getting better and better. 

Oops, and there I go off-topic again. Let’s just end this right here.

Plus my keyboard keys have broken because of how hard I was smacking the keys with my fingers!!