Jimmy Buffett taught me to play guitar — then life gave me the middle finger
I was supposed to keep this top secret — and very few people know this, so don’t go texting it to anyone at The Atlantic or Pete Hegseth — but Jimmy Buffett taught me how to play guitar.
Seriously.
In fact, it’s so top secret that not even Jimmy himself knew he was my guitar teacher. It’s just as well because, quite frankly, he didn’t do such a great job. I wonder if Jerry Reed might’ve done better.
While my dad taught me the few basic chords any 9-year-old kid needs to survive on the honky tonk circuit — G, C, D, A, etc. — I later learned how to string chords together while strumming my six-string along to Jimmy’s “Songs You Know by Heart” album.
(You see, young folks, “albums” were like streaming services of today if your Spotify could get scratched or your iTunes could melt or warp when left a hot car.)
I never learned to play the guitar well. If Jimmy knew that I’d told people he taught me to play, his last words would not have been “keep the party going.” Those would have been his next-to-last words. His final words would have been, “and tell that damn Chris Johnson to quit saying I taught him to play guitar.”
Strumming a guitar became therapy of sorts through the years. When life got tough, I’d just pick up a guitar and badly strum and sing (I use that term loosely.) “A Pirate Looks at Forty” or “Margaritaville.” And then I’d answer the door when the police arrived and said, “Sir, your neighbors have reported hearing the sound of a ferret run over by a garbage truck. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
I may have played “Margaritaville” more times than Jimmy himself. In fact, when my oldest grandson first heard Jimmy sing it on Radio Margaritaville while riding in our car, he excitedly yelled from the backseat, “It’s Pop!” I could have corrected him … but nah.
Jimmy once said that the only reason he took up the guitar — as a freshman at Auburn University, where he flunked out before going to Southern Miss — was to meet girls. Again, I took Jimmy’s lessons to heart and won over my wife by playing and serenading her with such love ballads as Adam Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song” and Johnny Cash’s “Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart.”
I have five guitars in my office right now as I’m writing this — including an electric guitar, a 12-string that my musician uncle left me, my primary guitar with a beach scene on it, a small one like Ed Sheeran prefers, and a tiny one that each of my grandkids have strummed. I can’t wrap my fat fingers around the neck of that last one to make a chord, though. Of course, my 2-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter can’t strum it, either, and just slaps it with a drumstick. She also slaps my desk, my chair and my rowing machine with a drumstick, too, so she may not exactly be a musical prodigy.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to strum any of these guitars for more than a year and a half. That’s because I developed something called “trigger finger” in the middle finger of my left hand. That finger is crucial for making many guitar chords. It’s also my “driving finger” — used to convey messages to fellow drivers such as “What does the word ‘yield’ mean on your planet?”
It ain’t exactly life-threatening, but it can be a painful condition, especially when the finger snaps and locks up on you. It could happen in the middle of the night while sleeping (me, not the finger) or while trying some strenuous activity like picking up a pencil. A couple of years ago while I was in El Salvador with a faith-based nonprofit, a very religious fellow noticed I was in some pain and asked what was wrong.
I told him it was no big deal, just a problem with a finger. He took my hand and immediately began praying for me — and my finger. I appreciated the intention, although it appears the issue landed way down God’s to-do list.
At last, thanks to many hours of finger stretches, exercises and perhaps some long-awaited divine intervention, I was able to strum a guitar again this past weekend — for a few minutes anyway. Because I hadn’t touched it in a long time, it was woefully out of tune, much like my voice. It’s in tune now, though (the guitar, not my voice).
Even though it was just a little hobby — and one I wasn’t even good at — I missed my guitars. It was another reminder to take nothing for granted in this life, big or small.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got the urge to grab my guitar and fend off these fins to the left and fins to right of me — at least until the cops show up asking about that poor ferret again.
What do you think about this?