When I was four years old, I wanted nothing more in life than to play the piano. My best friend Betty had a piano. But Betty hardly played it at all. She would rather play hide-and-seek. It didn't seem fair. One day my mother came to pick me up from Betty's house. "Watch this!" I told her. Then I ran to play a song I had learned that morning. I was so proud of what I'd learned. "That's nice, Jenny," she said. "But we can't afford a piano." When I turned six, my mother bought me a recorder . The problem was that I didn't love the recorder. When I played the recorder, I didn't feel anything special inside. I asked my mother if we could have a piano. "We still can't afford one," she said. "One day, I promise." In the sixth grade, my mother traded in the recorder for a real clarinet . I like the clarinet more, but it still wasn't a piano. It wasn't the music that was inside of me. One day, when I was in the seventh grade, my mother cut an ad out of the newspaper. We drove to a stranger's home in Providence, Rhode Island. The woman had a beautiful, dark wood piano from Russia. It was called an upright piano because it was tall. It was so shiny that it looked like it was wet. "We'll take it," my mother said. "It has a nice sound." After that, I played the piano every single day.When I left for school in the morning, I would leave the sheet music open on the piano. When I got home, I would walk straight to the piano and sit down and start playing the sheet music. I even played if I stayed home sick. I had finally found the music inside of me. Do you struggle with music? Have you been given an instrument to play, but you just can't play it? Maybe you think you're just no good or that you don't have any musical talent. Don't get discouraged. It's not true! We all have music inside of us, even if it's just what we listen to. Now it's up to you to find the right way to set that music free. How did Jenny get her piano?
Betty gave it to her. She traded in the clarinet for it. She got it from her uncle. Her mother bought it from a stranger.