When I was 11, my parents took me to a local elementary school to pick out a musical instrument. The cafeteria was abuzz with confused pre-teens, hopeful parents, and a few administrators helping children handle the instruments correctly. I don’t remember specifically why I wanted to play a stringed instrument; probably because I thought they had an aura of sophistication and I was a pompous little shit. Regardless, I tried the violin first. I winced when my bow touched the E-string, which had the surprising effect of lighting up my future music-teacher’s eyes. “Try this one!,” she said, “it’s not as high-pitched.” And that is how a viola first came into my hands.

If you’re one of the rare individuals not intimately acquainted with orchestral social hierarchy, let me break it down with some useful analogies. If violinists were med-students, violists would be grad-students; if violinists were doers, violists would be teachers; if violinists were Whole Foods, violists would be the dumpster behind Whole Foods filled with grad students and teachers digging for food. This is why my teacher was excited; few people willingly choose the viola. There is nothing inherently wrong with the instrument. It is a slightly larger version of the violin with a similar range and often rings with a richer sound. However, almost invariably, viola parts are simpler than their violin counterparts and rarely carry the melody. We are also the subject of jokes so demeaning that a crack about 9/11, the Kennedy assassination, and honor-killings would sound classy in comparison.

Needless to say, I rapidly caught on to my disenfranchised status, but it was too late. Like everyone else in the viola section I developed an inferiority complex, and in an intriguing twist unique to male violists, turned a little gay. I’m not upset about that, but life wasn’t easy for a barely-talented, teen violist in the late 90’s who had a secret crush on Macaulay Culkin.

I played for a couple years in college, where I was forced to take graded lessons. During my final lesson, after completing a piece (with a pathetic little flourish) I’d been working on for a few months, my teacher, a man about five foot two with a face like a wooden building block, looked at me and said, “Do you think anyone would want to pay to hear you play?” Rudeness aside, this comment sunk in over the following week and spawned, along with some terribly biting come-backs, the realization that my philosophy regarding musical performance was irreconcilable with his. Of course, the mature thing to do was to quit.

My viola made the move to NC with me and has received limited, but increasing, exercise over the years. Unsurprisingly, I’m still not very good, and I’ve developed a resting tremor in my fingers that makes vibrato a little tough. I’ve also developed, however, a bit more patience as well as a comforting faith that I can suck at something and still be happy with myself.