File this one under: It Could Only Happen to Me.
So we have this cool piano that is basically a “player” piano, but hooked to a server. This means you can not only have it play cds or play along with songs from a Yamaha internet station, but it can even play along with certain concerts live, like Elton John, etc. It’s a pretty cool piece of technology that we have since my husband plays nothing on the piano and I play about four songs, two of which are Chopsticks and Heart and Soul – so you see our limited repertoire requires a computer to play the thing.
So, along with said piano comes appointments from the creepy piano tuner. I’m sure he is a nice guy and all, but he is way too into the piano and loves to talk to me about it for way too long. To the point that it starts to freak me out. (Usually he’s lecturing me about not doing something correctly, like letting our cat sleep inside on the strings.*) He reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld where the Saab Mechanic steals Jerry’s car because he feels Jerry is not taking proper care of it.
Anyway, it gets to the point that this guy kind of creeps me out so much that I decide I don’t want to be home when he comes to tune the piano, which takes about an hour and is the most excruciating hour of your life. Perhaps this will give you an idea of what I am talking about:
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So I began to just make myself scarce when we had an appointment and my husband would deal with him. (For some reason, he has a better Annoyance Tolerance than I do… go figure.) This works well for awhile, until one day it turns out that we schedule an appointment for when neither of us are going to be here. We come up with the brilliant plan to let him come into the house while neither of us are home. We call and tell him that we will leave the back door open for him and he can come and tune the piano for an hour. I go shopping while he is supposed to be at the house.
When I come by an hour later, I spot his car in the driveway and go to the grocery store. I come back again and he is still in there. I decide that he must at least be close to being done, so I figure I’ll wait him out in the garage in my car.
* For the record – my cats do not sleep in the piano. They know this, and I know this, but Piano Dork insists that they are not only sleeping in the piano, they are doing it on a regular basis. Um, no.
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