6. Music Lessons

I was more than a little embarrassed by his comment, and he patted me on the shoulder.

“They always do that,” he said, “the young organ students; they go for the tremulants, reeds and strings. They’re just like the new sales girl in the candy shop. The proprietor tells her, on her first day at work, ‘Help yourself freely to all the candy you want.’ This man knows that after a day or two of all the candy she wants, she doesn’t want any more candy; certainly not for a long time.”

It delighted me to find that the pedal organ was going to be easy for me. Even with heavy-soled shoes on, the pedal keys were right where I had thought they would be.

Mr. Weber said my being left-handed would be to my advantage in playing church music. He insisted that left-handed people are left-footed also and that most of the church organ music is pedaled with the left foot. While he talked he was riffling through the large pages of a book of classical scores, which he placed on the organ desk. He pointed to Saint-Saens’ No. 3 in C Minor and said, “Now if you were playing the organ with a Symphony Orchestra, say in something like this, your left-footedness would do you no good.”

I assured him that I wouldn’t be doing an organ concerto, and he said, “By the way, what are you planning to do?”

I told him that my parents hoped I would enter the ministry.

Mr. Weber wanted to know whether I felt it was my vocation, and I confessed that I had received no celestial signs.

“But I do love churches,” I said, “big ones, with big organs and stained-glass windows, like this one, and the ones I have seen in pictures.”

“But aren’t you interested in saving souls?” asked Mr. Weber, and I said “No.”

“That’s good,” said Mr. Weber. “No lad of your age should be interested in saving souls. It’s not healthy. I’d rather you’d be normal.”

Incidentally, speaking of left-handed and left-footed people, they not only are more dextrous at the church organ, but the standard keyboard of the typewriter was arranged by and for left-handed operators. If you don’t believe it, notice how many of the letters in most frequent use are huddled on the left side of the machine, while such signs as * ¼ ½ @ ¢ ? / are on the extreme right.

I was taught to hold a pen in my right hand. Contrary to modern psychology, which views with alarm the hapless lefthander who is taught to write with his right hand, I never developed any nervous tics, never stammered, never sniffed, never involuntarily made funny faces, never was under compulsion to spit on every third telephone pole; and, so far, haven’t blacked out and murdered any of my relatives. Modern psychology knows a lot of things that aren’t necessarily so.