She's Got the Rhythm

Prologue

            Everyone is destined for something in life. Usually, what we are destined for is something that we don’t even want to do. We can try out a million different things, but we won’t know the right thing even if it smacks us in the face.

            According to my dad and my brother, I was destined to be a drummer. No, I did not want to be a drummer at all. I thought it was a complete waste of time and noise, banging on them for countless hours. What I really wanted to do was play the guitar, but they wouldn’t let me.

            They sat me down at the age of ten, handed me a pair of Vater sticks and said, “You’re going to play the drums. You may not want to, but trust us; you will thank us in for it in the long run.”

            I didn’t really know what I was supposed to think at that point-I always did what my dad and brother told me to do. So, I took the sticks and they showed me a couple simple rhythms that I would play back to them. It wasn’t that hard at first, I just didn’t understand why I had to learn.

            Coming from a family of drummers, I later figured out that there was no way I could back out. It’s like a family tradition, something that gets handed down from generation to generation. I wasn’t the kind of person to break traditions, so I just went along with it for the next three years.

            I didn’t realize how much I loved it until that one day I came home from school, sat down at the drum set without my dad and brother, and taught myself how to play a Blink-182 song.

            My dad had walked in on me, mid-verse, and just smiled. That’s all he did. Didn’t say a word to me after I was done, he left the room, as if his job was done.  

            I decided not to tell my friends that I was a drummer. Back then, I hung out with the popular, Abercrombie-clad girls and if I even said a word about playing the drums, I’m sure I would’ve been kicked out of the clique. I ended up not hanging out with them anyway because I realized they were all selfish human beings. So, I got some new friends, but I didn’t tell them either. I figured, why was it so important for people to know?

            I guess you could say that playing the drums was always my dirty little secret, one that would never come out until another three years later.

            Little did I know that throughout all these years, my dad and brother had been absolutely right. This is where my story would begin, my story to destiny.