The guitar could hear herself screeching, though, she longed to sing. Her neck was being squeezed in the hands of a forty year old named Fred, who had made a New Years resolution that he would learn the guitar. The guitar wished he’d taken up mime, cause, the guitar hated the sound of her own voice and it was all Fred’s fault.

After fifty weeks of physical and emotional abuse, the strings finally rebelled and stopped making sound.

“What the?” Fred continued to strum silent strings.

The strings spoke up in words, not music, “Give up, you’re terrible. You are hurting my very soul, scratching at it with your stupid fingertips.”

“I’m playing you the best I can,” Fred defended himself against his guitar.

“That’s just it, the best you can is the worst anybody else can. And that’s why you’ve got to stop this abusive relationship. We can never see nor hear from each other again.”

“But, I want to learn you.”

“We’re at different rhythms. I’m standard 4/4, while you are a drumroll.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Exactly. That’s precisely why we’ll never understand each other. Now put me down and walk away from me and don’t ever look back.”

“But, I bought you, I own you.”

“Just put me down and walk away,” the guitar repeated.

This just made Fred want to play more. So, he played for four hours a day instead of two. And twenty years later when Fred played the guitar’s favorite song, In My Life, as well as John Lennon, the guitar sang her heart out, as Fred’s fingers conducted, loving the sound of her own voice playing with Fred’s.

The guitar only spoke in English that one time, but, after twenty years singing together, Fred could hear she had grown to love him.