Years ago, when I was in middle school, I took the band class and played the saxophone. Despite the fact that I wanted very badly to be in band throughout high school, my step dad would not let me. He called my saxophone an “annoying, noisy horn” and would hardly even let me practice when I had the class.
Since then, my instrument had been packed up, and collecting dust. When we were moving to our new house, I happened to find the good-ol’ horn and immediately picked it up and started playing music that I somehow remembered after six years of not touching an instrument. At that point, I knew that I wanted to play for real again.
In one of the message boards that I frequent, I posted a topic regarding for my desire to seriously learn to play the saxophone. I asked the members of this message board to give me the pros and cons of having professional lessons and self-teaching. Many people recommended taking lessons because you have the motivation to really, seriously practice. That if I was teaching myself, I would be likely to skip over important basics just to play “fun stuff”. Then people who were self taught told me that when you are taking lessons, you don’t get the ability to develop your own style of music and you have the option at working at your own pace.
Then they asked me, why do you want to learn an instrument? What kind of music would you want to play? I want to play music because I love creating things that are beautiful, and music is beautiful. For my saxophone, I want to learn to play Jazz (I love Jazz music, and jazz saxophone is perfect!). I have always found the ability to play an instrument and play it well to be one of the most admirable talents a person can have. Plus, what better way to woo the ladies than with a little smooth jazz? 
A few weeks after I made that post, I got a message in my inbox. It was from a fellow member of the message board. She apologized for not having sent me a message sooner because she was having difficulties getting into her storage facility to get the 50+ pages of exercises and technique. She then asked if I would be willing to send her my address so she could mail it to me. I gave her the address figuring that worst case scenario, she sent me an envelope full of anthrax. I was baffled that a complete stranger would go out of their way to do something for another person, but was very happy that for once someone was truly kind to me.
Today I got the package in the mail. This woman paid about $8 just to mail this to me, and who knows how much she paid to make all of the copies for the information. She told me it was about 50 pages, it’s more like 200! Not only that, but there are even occasional post-it notes giving me tips and explaining what each section of the binder contains.
And all she asked for was an address? Maybe I’m suppose to “Pay it Forward” somehow… there is no way someone can go that far out of their way and not want something in return. Or maybe there really are truly kind people out there in the world.
