Although I have no recollection of it whatever, when I was quite young I apparently began agitating about wanting to learn to play the piano. I must have been persistent, because in the summer of 1955, when I was eight years old, my parents bought me a piano, and my mother arranged for me to begin lessons that fall.
At my very first lesson, my piano teacher, Mrs. Roberts, explained what was expected of me in the way of practice. She said there was no excuse for not practicing. “Even if you hurt a finger,” she said, “you can work around it. The only way to get out of practicing would be to break your arm.”
The next day, therefore, on my way home from school I fell off my bicycle and broke my arm. Lessons were suspended for six weeks.
A long time later Mrs. Roberts told me that for years she had always given new students that same no-excuse-but-a-broken-arm speech, but after me, she never said it to anyone again.
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