My mother started teaching piano when she was in her teens. She still does as a matter of fact, even though she is about to celebrate her 91st birthday.

When I was a boy she thought I should learn to play. Don’t get me wrong; I love the piano. I grew up listening to my mother play classical pieces on the piano and organ. I thought the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart as the only music there was for the longest time. But when she sat me down at the piano, I cried. “It’s too hard!” I would say. “Don’t make me do this.” You’d think she was torturing me instead of sharing her love of this amazing instrument with her only son. I never did learn to play.

The great American industrialist Henry Ford famously said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” I’m not so sure. My mother thought she could teach me the piano, but that didn’t work out, even though she had plenty of evidence of her ability to teach even the most recalcitrant student. After all, she’d been successfully teaching for two and half decades by the time I came along. So my apothegm for this column is:

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