The Accordion Prince
On Playing With Spider Man
I was eight-years-old, living in suburban Southern California. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was doing my thing. My thing was playing with my favorite action figure, Spider-Man. I liked this action figure because it had joints, you could bend his elbows and knees and that was ideal for imagining him in action adventure movies or playing professional football games. I rarely viewed my Spider-Man action figure as Spider-Man. I mostly thought of him as Indiana Jones or San Francisco Forty-Niner’s quarterback, Joe Montana. Either I would envision him in the jungle running from cannibals or on the playing field, driving ninety-yards toward the end zone with less than a minute to play.
Speaking of play, I played with my Spider-Man until I was about ten. Ten! That’s very old to be playing with a doll. But I was an only child so I believe I can be cut some slack. I remember distinctly the last time I played with Spider-Man, as a ten-year-old. My mother came down the stairs, saw me on the floor with Spidey and decided to take a picture of my action figure and me so she could remember when I was a boy and I liked playing with my favorite superhero. When she took the picture, it made me feel self-conscious. I never picked Spider-Man up again. She killed it. Nice going, Mom, extinguishing my youth. But this has nothing to do with anything.
It was a Saturday afternoon, I was eight, playing with my Spider-Man, when someone knocked on the front door. My mother answered. She was greeted by two clean-cut men, in their twenties. They were dressed in suits and looked like either FBI agents or Jehovah’s Witnesses. Only they weren’t carrying guns or bibles. They were both carrying accordions. They were carrying accordions because they were door-to-door accordion lesson salesmen. This is the truth. I swear on the soul of my dead dog, Willy, may he rest in peace. The accordion lesson salesmen wondered if anyone in our home, particularly any children, would be interested in learning to play. They taught at a new accordion school not far from our neighborhood and were offering a package of lessons for a special discount rate. I don’t know what is more bizarre. The fact that there were accordion lesson salesmen at the door, or the fact that my parents let them in our house.
One minute I was playing with Spider-Man in my room, the next I was sitting on the couch in the living room, holding an accordion. The curve balls life can throw at you sometimes. These two dapper gentlemen began teaching me a few basic notes. They said I was a quick learner and thought I could possibly thrive at their new school. I was totally confused; I didn’t know what was going on. I thought maybe a little clown would jump out of the accordion like a Jack-in-the-box and everybody would laugh and the strange men would go away. I wanted them to leave because I had left Joe Montana on the four-yard-line with twenty-nine seconds left on the clock. I still don’t know exactly how this went down, you’d have to ask my parents, but somehow my parents were convinced to sign on the dotted line for the discount package and I became an official student of the new accordion school.
My lessons began a week later, in the evening. I was joined by about ten other kids, all around my age, all looking just as uncomfortable to be there as I was. The two young men who showed up at the door were there, but the true leader, the maestro, was Mr. Hotchkiss. He was a little older, also dressed very nice in a starched shirt and tie. His hair was black and shiny, short and slicked back. There was something in his eyes, an intensity that could have only come from a place like Nam or alcoholism or maybe both. All of his new students sat in chairs in a semi-circle, holding their newly purchased accordions, as Mr. Hotchkiss paced in front of us. He gave us a speech about what we could learn from playing the accordion. He used words like discipline and dedication and polka. This happened. This was real. What I remember most was at the end of the speech, when like a drill sergeant, Mr. Hotchkiss aggressively pointed at the student on the other end of the semi-circle from me and asked (more like demanded), “Are you going to be an excellent accordion player?”
The student was a girl; she was scared. She said, “Yes,” with a gulp. Mr. Hotchkiss pointed his finger along the semi-circle and every frightened pupil nodded their head, giving the same answer as the girl every time Mr. Hotchkiss asked the same question. Yes, yes, yes. I was the last person in the semi-circle. By the time Mr. Hotchkiss got to me, every single student had given the same answer. Yes. I wanted to be different. Not because I cared about being a stupid accordion player, but because I wanted to stand out. So when Mr. Hotchkiss pointed his bony finger at me and forcefully asked if I was going to be an excellent accordion player, I answered with an ultra-confident, “Of course.” I just wanted to say something other than yes. Mission accomplished. Well, let me tell you (or have you read), Mr. Hotchkiss loved that. In his eyes, I was a prodigy.
We learned to play Mary Had A Little Lamb, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Ach Du Lieber Augustin and other top accordion hits like that. This was all leading to a huge concert we were going to give at the school as sort of our graduation ceremony. Before the big concert, we were given a homework assignment. We had to appear in a smaller concert somewhere outside of the school at a venue of our choosing. Mr. Hotchkiss or the other staff would not be there. This concert would be performed using the honor system, sort of. We were given a document that had to be signed by an adult confirming we had truly provided musical entertainment to a group of five or more. I chose, if that’s the word, to play at my babysitter’s house, Mrs. Carol. Mrs. Carol took care of me after school until my mom came and got me at the end of the day. She took care of about eight kids my age, and this is who I played Hava Nagilah for on the accordion. The kids, my friends, all looked as confused as I felt embarrassed. When it was over, I was showered in mild applause as everyone looked at each other, clearly wondering, “Why is he doing this?”
A few nights before the big graduation concert, Mr. Hotchkiss asked to speak with my father in private once our class lesson was done. They went into his office for a long time until they finally came out with poker faces. On the way home, I asked my dad what that was about. He told me Mr. Hotchkiss wanted to let him know that he thought I was an unstoppable talent. Mr. Hotchkiss thought I had the potential to become one of the greatest accordion players of my generation. For reals, yo. This surprised me. I was okay, but I didn’t consider myself to be like the Eddie Van Halen of accordion players. Mostly because there is no Eddie Van Halen of accordion players. Or if there is, the guy lives in Poland and we haven’t heard of him. I had no plans to relocate to Poland. I was eight for crying out loud.
The night of the big concert arrived. We blew the roof off the house for the ten sets of parents in attendance and whatever other smattering of friends and family whose bad karma had gotten them roped into this event. When it was over, Mr. Hotchkiss requested a private meeting with my parents. He was convinced that I was a musical genius. The cheap accordion my parents had bought me was holding me back. Mr. Hotchkiss explained to my parents that with the kind of talent I possessed, only the super deluxe vitameatavegamin model accordion could highlight my skills properly. This special accordion came with a price tag of $2,500. $2,500. For an accordion. A person should be able to fly on a $2,500 accordion to Europe. It should run on diesel. My parents told Mr. Hotchkiss they would have to think it over, but mostly they just wanted to get away from him. Soon after, they discovered that Mr. Hotchkiss gave this same pitch to every other parent in the school. That’s when my parents took me out of Mr. Hotchkiss’s Accordion Lesson School For The Gifted and signed me up for karate lessons.
Yes, Hotchkiss was a snake oil salesman. But I wasn’t that bad at the accordion. I was actually pretty good. If I had stuck to it, I probably would have become an accordion superstar. I could have been somebody.
I’m okay with that.