Follow the Bouncing Ball

A while back, the pianist at our church quit and we were left without one.  Since I had taken piano lessons for several years as a child, it was decided that maybe I could brush up on my playing and fill in until someone else could be found.

There are several things wrong with this assumption.  The first, and maybe the most important, is the fact that it had been thirty years since I had played.  It is NOT like riding a bike; you have to practice (at least once a decade!) to be able to play with any sense of accuracy.  The second, and equally important point, is that with MS your eyes do not always focus on what you are looking at.

I did the best I could.  After quite a bit of practice I was getting the hang of it again.  But it is hard to play when the notes are bouncing across the page.  The people would be singing one thing while I tried to find where I was in all the jumbled up notes I was seeing.

But I am one of the lucky ones.  Some people with MS have gone blind, or so near blind as to be unable to function in a normal capacity.  The blurring, jumping and eye movements are common. 

I remember Mitch Miller’s show when I was a child. On that show, the words to the songs scrolled across the bottom of the screen and you followed the bouncing ball to sing along.  That was fun; this is not.