I was having a conversation with a friend a few weeks ago.  We were talking about how fire-pits are wonderful.  I mean really, they are amazing.  You get to enjoy time with people you like with something pretty happening.  Talking about fire-pits leads inevitably to talking about the social appropriateness of guitar-time.

My friend told me that a few years ago she and her husband invited some friends over for a fire-pit.  She said that in the invitation she wrote “and if someone want to bring a guitar, that would be ok.”  She told me that she had never really thought about the pros or cons of guitar-time (since it had been present in her life for a significant amount of time, without being a feature), until, a friend replied to the invitation saying “I hate guitar-time.”

Slightly shocked, her friend laid out the same case I would have against guitar-time.  Personally, I am against guitar-time.  I don’t mean that I am against people getting together and playing music for one another.  That can be lovely, but only if that is the expressed purpose of, or at least stated possibility mutually agreed upon for, the evening.  That is very different from guitar-time.  Guitar-time is when at a social event someone bring out their guitar, usually without being asked, and begins to play, usually slow, weepy songs.  I do my best to keep my feelings about guitar-time to myself.  Many people enjoy guitar-time as a thing and I believe they are well intentioned in doing so, so I usually just absent myself.

In it’s essence, guitar-time is an activity that is supposed to be enjoyable, and we all say that it is, but is actually just uncomfortable, made more so because we refuse to admit that it is such.

Half-way through this week the phrase “I hate guitar-time” popped into my head and I couldn’t stop laughing.  I sent my friend a message telling her about it.  I’ve decided that I’m simply adopting her friend’s phrase anytime I find myself in the position of politely accepting a situation that I would rather run screaming from.

I’m slightly concerned by how much of my life I devote to collection phrases, but I digress.

I wish I had remembered to say “I hate guitar-time” to myself on Friday during parent-teacher conferences.  Now, of course, the main difference would be that parent-teacher conferences are a professional necessity, while guitar-time is an unfortunate social faux-pas.  I can’t avoid parent-teacher conferences just by leaving the room.  Well, at least not if I want to keep my job.

But maybe, I can keep “I hate guitar-time” in mind as a mantra for the next round I’ll have to do.  I used to be an intensely confrontational person.  But drinking was a fairly effective way of keeping my mouth shut, avoiding telling people what I really thought. Asked a question I didn’t want to answer, I would shrug and sip my drink.  I’m still fairly non-confrontational.  I try to stay out of situation where I know I am going to come into significant conflict with other people’s choices or opinions.  But while avoidance can be a nifty coping trick, it’s not a long-term strategy.

I can admit that I hate something, but that I will also endure it.  The problem with avoidance is that you build no resilience.  I could avoid telling parents difficult realities about their children.  But every time I do, in the midst of the yelling and the accusations and the denials, I get just a little bit better at surviving it.  Even knowing it will suck, I know that it will suck less the next time.

Maybe, someday, I’ll even be able to tell that dude who starts a spontaneous strum session that he can stop.

Wait, I probably still shouldn’t say that.

(3 Years, 4 Months, and 5 Days Sober)