We sat in black folding chairs, with a music stand before us. Light poured through an open window. “Why,” Jane asked, “did you pick the clarinet instead of another instrument?” 

Jane, my clarinet teacher, was very experienced and always tried to push me to do as well as possible. She also taught at a music institute. She liked to start our lessons the same way she started lessons at her music school, with a warm-up and a question. I thought about her question. 

In fourth grade, the school had us pick instruments to play. To help us decide, they had an assembly one day for the fourth graders. The school had some fifth graders play different instruments while we sat on the bleachers listening. It was not a time for the fifth graders to show off, or play some complex songs. It was just a time for them to show us what we could expect to achieve with each instrument.

The next week, I was still deciding between the clarinet and the flute. I wrote “flute” on a scrap of paper and wrote “clarinet” on another. Then, I crumpled the scraps into balls and threw them into the air. On their way down, my brain subconsciously picked the clarinet. I had never even touched one before and my brain picked it. I picked up a ball and unwrapped it. It was “clarinet.” I think that if I got “flute” I would have just redone it until I got “clarinet.” 

A week later, I walked into the music store. The bell above the door tinkled. The person at the front desk looked up and asked us “Hello, are you looking for anything in particular?”

“Yes,” my dad said, “I need a clarinet for my son. Do you have any that are suitable for beginners?”

“Of course,” the man replied, “the clarinets are in the back, follow me.”

He led us through the store, humming merrily. We passed many instruments: drums, saxophones, violins, and many others. This store even had exotic and strange instruments from other parts of the world. We finally arrived in the clarinet section. It had white walls and was brightly lit by luminous light bulbs. 

“Ok, pick one.” My dad told me.

I bent down to examine the different clarinet models. There were some cheap, plastic ones, and some expensive ones made of premium materials (to this day, I still don’t know why they are so expensive. Some can go for thousands of dollars.) I settled on an intermediate one made of wood. I bent down and felt its smooth wooden surface and polished keys. It was slim and black, with an impressive array of metallic pins and buttons. Also, the instrument smelled faintly like a new car. It looked cool, and I remember at that time, I thought the bottom part looked like the fart gun from Despicable Me. I showed my dad the instrument, and he agreed to purchase it. We walked through the shop and arrived at the check-out place. The guy at the counter said there were two options; either we could buy it and pay the whole price in one payment, or we could do rent-to-buy, which meant we would rent the clarinet, but after a few months, we would own it. My dad chose rent-to-buy, just in case I wanted to switch instruments later.

“Remember to practice,” my dad said as he swiped his credit card.

I really did not know why I picked it, but I finally said to Jane, “I picked it because it had a lot of buttons.” 

“Oh,” she said, chuckling, “so you were like ‘that's a lot of buttons, I like that.’”

“Yeah, I guess” I said, internally scolding myself for not finding a better response.

My brain’s choosing of the clarinet was a strange thing. I had never laid a hand on the instrument, yet I wanted to play it. I think I chose it because it simply looked fun to play. Back then, I did not consider how much work and practice would go into it; I probably thought it would be like a toy, you occasionally play with it, but stop when you get bored. Although I don’t know what made me do it, that decision was one of the best I have ever made.