Songs in the Key of Futility

Admit it: You have a musical dream.

In the solitude of your shower stall, you close your eyes, open your mouth and sing:

"When a man loves a woman, can't keep his mind on nothin' else. . . ."

"Sundown, you better take care, if I find you been creepin' round my back stairs. . . ."

"Don't wanna be an American idiot. . . ."

Or perhaps you see yourself as a hotshot instrumentalist, burning up the fretboard of an electric guitar or pounding on a piano.

Some of us follow our musical dreams. Others become drummers.

And still others take a few steps in the direction of our dreams -- we buy a fancy microphone, we buy a guitar, we buy a keyboard. We get ready to rock -- and then we get real.

We wake up. We smell the coffee.

And the coffee smells like . . . well, it smells like a guitar we spent 300 bucks on staring us in the face and reminding us every time we see it that the strings always kind of hurt our fingers and we never did learn "Stairway to Heaven" and 300 -- okay, 200 -- bucks would sure come in handy.

That's when we compose an ad that reads something like this:

"GUITAR FOR SALE. I bought this thing 2 years ago and was 'gonna learn' how to play. It hasn't seen much use, and I'm gonna sell to help me buy a keyboard. Some people never learn. . . ."