After two decades without sax, I've taken up playing my favorite woodwind again. Anyone familiar with the sound of beginners' band practice is also familiar with the sort of cringing indulgence demanded of supporters during the squawking early phase of lessons. Fortunately for my family and neighbors, relearning the saxophone happens a lot faster than learning how to play it in the first place. In my experience, this is true of many geeky enrichment activities.
Still, there's a valid elephant in the room: Why do geeks ever give up the hobbies we love? Of course, anyone can lose interest in a given activity, but deeply enthusiastic people tend to hang onto the objects of their interest as long as they can. Gamers may stop playing a game for awhile after they've beaten it, but quit gaming altogether? Not likely. Band geeks are like that, too, as are avid knitters, comic book aficionados, and Harry Potter nerds. So what makes a person give up the geek?
It seems like all the best things in life are inevitably pitted against three major constraints: Time, Space and Money. Growing older is especially hard to do when classes and jobs gobble up all the time we might rather spend designing Lego starships and jamming with our friends. Plus, most hobbies have material components - musical instruments and lesson books, complete trading card expansion sets, the entire visible spectrum in skeins of yarn - but it's possible to have too much of a good thing. Books, for example. My shelves are sagging, here!
The money issue is enough on its own, but it's the worst of the common constraints because it often amplifies the effects of the other two, and because financial limitations seem to be the hardest to improve. Sometimes the only available options for acquiring more money are to spend more time laboring for it, or to sell-off our collectibles. And sometimes it goes the other way: Unemployment can easily cost a family its home, and with that one big loss goes all their space and money. Then they have a dearth of free time, but a paucity of hobbies with which to enjoy it.
There are other reasons to set aside a geeky obsession for awhile. People who have babies may need to put the grown-up Lego bricks into storage for a few years. Ditto their beading needles and glass-blowing kit. Some hobbies take a physical toll on the geek; gamers and writers know what I'm talking about. Sports geeks, too.
Ultimately, I surrendered the saxophone because it was stolen. Twice. A couple guys in a pick-up truck yoinked my first sax while I was playing with friends at our school bus stop. I was devastated! And my mother was justifiably cross at me for leaving it unattended. After a relative stole my second saxophone - from my bedroom closet while I was away for summer vacation - I gave up. I couldn't afford to keep replacing them, and they were too heavy to carry with me everywhere. I thought of taking up the piccolo, but it wouldn't be the same.
Why return to it after all this time? Well, why does anyone? Passion. Nostalgia. To make up for lost time. Or, as in my case, by SURPRISE! It'd been so long since I played sax that I barely had the lung capacity to hold a note for four beats when my husband surprised me with a new brass beauty on my birthday this year. Just few weeks later and I'm back in the geek of it. But as cheeky tribute to my childhood band geek trauma, I'm naming her Lisa (That Damn Saxophone).
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njXuEypdqhI[/youtube]
