To me, the most exciting thing about turning eight years old was the presents. Each year I would flip through the pages of toy store catalogues, creating an endless list of things that I might want. My only setback was that I was quite the outdoorsy kid. Every day I would rush home from school, drop my bags, and sprint outside to play with my neighbors. However, my birthday falls in February, and I already had plenty of sleds to use in the snow. This caused my birthday list to be filled with meaningless items that I didn’t really want.

Instead of giving me regular toys for my eighth birthday, my dad came up with a better idea for a present: a guitar. My dad has always had a great love for music, and he thought that he could share that with me through an instrument, although he doesn’t play guitar himself. When he told me, I thought it was a great idea. Even as a toddler I would fiddle around with the keys on our piano, trying to figure out how to play some of my favorite songs. I didn’t know it yet, but that guitar would be the key to unlocking my own love for music.

A few days before my birthday, we went to Guitar Center to pick out my guitar. The store was filled with the sounds of musicians trying out guitars to see which one they would buy, and I remember being astounded by the amount of talent in that room. We walked into the acoustic guitar booth, and it was silent. Wooden guitars hung from every inch of the wall in all shapes and sizes. As I stared wide eyed at the instruments, my dad talked to the store employee. They decided that because I was young and was just starting to learn the guitar, I should have a small beginner’s guitar first. The guitar came along with an instruction manual and a DVD on how to play the guitar, and a stand to set the guitar on. When we left that day with the guitar, I was beaming from ear to ear.

For the next few days, I struggled with aching fingers to learn how to play the guitar. Following instructions from diagrams and pictures in the booklet, I plucked out painfully simple songs. However, I started to lose interest in the guitar quickly. Maybe it was because I was too young to understand the instructions properly, or maybe I wasn’t ready to learn something so complicated. Maybe I was just too embarrassed that I might make a mistake and create a fool of myself. Whatever the reason, I put the guitar down and didn’t touch it again for nearly five years.

When I was about thirteen, I noticed my guitar sitting undisturbed in the corner of my room. Through listening to new types of music I had gained an interest in the guitar again, and this time I really wanted to learn how to play it. I began to teach myself the basics of the guitar, such as the strings, the notes, and how to tune it. I mastered the simple, childish songs that I had started with in third grade, and moved on to more complex tunes and chords. In a few months, I was practicing for at least an hour a day, hoping to learn even more. The guitar became not only an instrument to learn, but a hobby and source of relaxation. Through my guitar, I started to discover my love for music.

I don’t believe that one single moment could completely change my life. Everything that has happened to me is a part of me, and has shaped me into the person who I am today. But if I had to pick a defining aspect of my life, it would be this. If my dad hadn’t given me a guitar for my eighth birthday, I would never have discovered my love for music, and many of the opportunities that I have today would never have happened. Even now as I write this, my guitar sits next to me in my room, begging me to pick it up.