In 1980 when I was ten (adorable btw), Santa or rather my parents gave me a brand new flash guitar for Christmas, which I'm still a bit bitter about to this day.
So I've decided to write about it in the hopes that it might help me finally put to bed this terrible Christmas memory that remains a source of confusion and pain to this very day.
Please keep in mind that this took place thirty years ago (but it seems like only yesterday).
I hated this stupid wooden guitar on this particular Christmas because of course as a young boy I still wanted toys at that time and the guitar seemed so grown up for a ten year old (not to mention it was so BIG). I instantly felt resentment on that morning because my parents were forcing me to grow up with this ridiculous instrument that I loathed from the instant I unwrapped it.
My brother still got lots of toys.
I hated him.
In the picture I've attached to this entry, you can't tell but I was crying and screaming inside and I just didn't want to show my parents how unhappy I was. This guitar cost a lot of money I thought which must have been the reason why I didn't get much else apart from the Christmas outfit I'm wearing. It was all very new and super masculine! My father was a real manly man you see and he wanted his two boys to be the same. I failed in that area miserably according to him, which continues to please me of course. My brother Corey was the perfect son who loved sports, eating and farting.
Just like my father.
I NEVER asked for a guitar or for that matter...... ever mentioned a guitar.
EVER!
My father was a keen musician in a rock band called The Nashville Rebels.
I think he wanted me to follow in his footsteps AGAIN by being a musician, but the only feet I wanted to follow were the roller skating ones in Olivia Newton John's XANADU movie which I LOVED!
Years later when I was sixteen I was living in Amsterdam.
I wrote a letter home inquiring after my guitar which I suddenly wanted very much and had developed a passion for playing them.
But it was too late because my parents assumed that I would never change from a ten year old and might want my guitar one day when I was older.
My parents gave the guitar away when I was in Europe and I was furious.
Apparently they had no room in their new "condo".
I phoned my mum and asked her to send it to me and she informed me that they had SOLD the guitar.
My mother tried to explain that she thought I did not want it, but she never even bothered to ask.
They gave away MY guitar.
In fact they gave away all of my things and I never saw them again.
I remember feeling at the time that they had given me away too.
I was only sixteen.
That Christmas and the guitar came to symbolize abandonment deep within my heart and to this day I feel it was "given away" like its rightful owner.
Me.
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