Sometimes life is a farce, no matter how hard we try to be ‘in control.’ In our case, the latest comedy of errors started with our 15-year-old son, the budding rock star.

A few months back he started taking guitar lessons. And to his parents’ amazement, the kid was actually good at it! What’s more, he stuck to his lessons and the accompanying practice like peanut butter to the roof of your mouth.

Well, his father was so impressed that he decided at the first opportunity to get our teen-ager his own guitar. He combed the online classified ads looking for every announcement of an electric guitar for sale. Trouble was, most of those ads wanted ‘way more than we could afford in this recession economy.

Not wanting to get our youngsters hopes up, we kept quiet about the guitar search. Somehow, though, he overheard us discussing the topic one night after dinner. (Why is it that teen-agers who can never hear you calling them to help with a household chore suddenly develop sonar when a subject that concerns them comes up?) Despite the uncertainty of our acquisition, our son was suddenly over the moon about the prospect of getting his own guitar.

Our son was ecstatic. Not only would he not have to borrow one of his teacher’s guitars for practice; he’d have his very own instrument that he could use (and abuse, most likely) any way he pleased.

However, we got a major parental jolt when Dad inquired about which model of rock ‘n roll guitar our son desired.

Our son’s face became very solemn at the word ‘rock.’ Then he rather sheepishly told his parents that he’d been studying classical guitar, not rock ‘n roll. He didn’t want the kind of flat-backed electric ‘axes’ we knew from our younger days. He wanted something for classical music, such as a takamine acoustic electric guitar.

Then he said, no, wait, maybe it should be an ibanez acoustic electric guitar.

We were stunned. For all that we expected him to be influenced by rock music culture, he’d chosen for himself to study the classics.

That’s how we fell into this canyon of the ages. Now that we’re out, we know our family has reached a new plateau – accompanied by guitar music, no less.