The pandemic was my excuse to abandon piano lessons.
It wasn’t that I wouldn’t practice or didn’t enjoy pounding away on the keyboard. The problem was that my piano teacher, Tatiana, is a perfectionist. She wanted me to get it exactly and precisely right and so I practiced the same piece over and over. She would smile as I did my lessons but it was a strained and pathetic smile, as the masterpieces that she had loved from her youth were mangled, tortured and slowly murdered in a most grizzly fashion by yours truly. Finally, I couldn’t do it to her anymore and I used the pandemic as a way out.