A Child's Dream

“How about a beginner’s guitar?” asked my dad after dinner one day.

“Dear, are you really putting her on that path?” My mom tried to stop him.

“Yes, why not. Here-” he handed me the guitar. “For every song you can play, I’ll give you 500 yen to spend on anything you want! Deal?”

My mom shook her head.

“Wow! It’s amazing, thank you Dad!” I said, as I grabbed the guitar. It had a soft surface, and was made of a very pretty, light colored wood. It had a sweet and natural smell, too.

I practiced after school every day, learning chords and trying to get my fingers strong enough to press down the strings. It hurt a bit, but after a couple of months, I managed to play some of the easier chords. I picked an easy first song so I could get the money from my dad, and he seemed happy when I played it for him. I was rewarded for my hard work.

I kept practicing and practicing until I could learn a new song every week. I also started singing while I played. It was amazing! I could buy everything I wanted, and I was having a lot of fun doing it. Some chords were still too hard, but I kept pressing on the strings as hard as I could and even when I made mistakes, I kept going until I got the songs right.

One day I came back from school, eager to practice some more singing and guitar, when I found my mom crying. I was sad to see her cry, and I never liked seeing adults cry. I think it’s because lately my father hasn’t been around, and it’s been harder for just the two of us.

“Are you fine Mom? Where’s Dad?” I asked.

“Don’t you worry. Why don’t you go to the park for a little bit? I’ll pick you up soon, alright?” my mom said, forcing a smile.

“Sure! See you there!” I hurried to my room to grab my guitar and left our house.

I wasn’t too happy about seeing my mom sad, and I haven’t seen my father in a long time. He owes me a lot of money for my songs! But that’s fine because… I’m happy with how much I’ve learned.

When I got to the park I heard a younger boy crying. Why is everyone sad around here? I felt like I had to do something about it, but what?

“Hi! What’s wrong?” I asked the boy. He ignored me and continued crying. I looked around and saw a group of kids laughing at him on the other side of the park, and then I looked near the crying boy and noticed one of his toys broken on the floor.

“Did they do this?” I asked. The boy nodded, crying.

I kept trying to talk with the boy, fix the toy, make him smile, but nothing I did helped. The group of bullies laughed at my attempts, and that made me angry. I simply glared at them to scare them away.

“The weird girl is here again, she’s no fun,” they complained as they left the park. They thought I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I always did. At least I could make those bullies leave! But there was nothing I could do for the crying boy, and after more attempts to make him smile, I gave up.

“Fine, if you don’t want my help I won’t keep trying. I’ll keep you company until your parents are here.” I felt bad for giving up, but I felt like nothing I could do would change things, and I got frustrated.

I sat on a bench and started playing the song I was learning for that week, deeply focused on hitting all the strings on the chords and syncing my voice with them. Once I was done playing I heard the boy walk up to me. He had stopped crying, and was happily clapping.

“You’re so awesome!” said the boy.

I laughed a little before proudly saying “Thank you thank you, that’s me!” I tried to smile for him, I didn’t want him to go back to being sad.

“Are you going to be an idol?” the boy asked.

“I don’t know…” I answered.

“You should, you’re so good!”

I didn’t know how to answer the boy's kindness, I felt that maybe he was too young to understand that I wasn’t really great. It wasn’t the first time I had practiced at the park. Most of the other kids would ignore me, or leave, or say mean things about me, thinking I couldn’t understand what they said. But I knew I was still learning music, and that it’s supposed to be hard in the beginning. Maybe because they said all those mean things about me, I started believing them and I stopped thinking my music was good. Even if I thought I had ignored them, maybe a part of me still thought they were right.

After a while the boy’s mother showed up, and looked at me as if I was a worse influence than even those bullies in the park. She made her son leave the park quickly. It didn’t matter to me how she looked at me, or why she reacted like that, what mattered was that I had turned that boy’s tears into happiness, and that felt like the best feeling in the world.

But then I thought helping one person wasn’t enough. The bullies were still bullies, and the boy would still have reasons to cry as long as they were around. My mother was sad, and so were lots of other kids at school. I knew it was a tough and unhappy town, because I had gone through all of that myself too. I can understand that some of these things hurt inside. There can be a lot of reasons to be sad.

One day, when I was feeling a bit down, my mom offered to take me to the movies. It was a movie for kids about not giving up. What really mattered to me was that the song during that movie inspired me, and as soon as we got back home, I practiced it everyday until I got it right.

And once I finished learning the song, I went to the park to play it whenever I could. I thought that if that song could make me smile, it could make others smile too, and I really wanted to share that. But none of the kids showed up. I tried going at different times and days, but nobody was there. I kept playing it, hoping someday, someone would listen, but they never came. I knew some kids didn’t like me, and I knew their parents thought I was strange, but I never thought they wouldn’t even let me try to make them happier. If only they’d come to listen to my songs, maybe they could smile too!

And then I realized, if their parents aren’t bringing them here, maybe I can bring them here myself. So then I immediately started drawing flyers and I put them everywhere I could. Park Concert! Sunday! 3PM. Let’s share music! I dropped some at school, convenience stores, and just about anywhere I could walk to where the other kids would find it, and I kept practicing the song everyday until finally, the day came.

I walked to the park with my guitar early, and I saw that a few kids had decided to come. There weren’t many, maybe at most eight of them, but that was more than enough for me. I also noticed the boy that I helped smile when he was crying, and he seemed happy to be there. I waved at him before I started.

“Hi everyone, thanks for coming!” I tried to sound as happy as I could, for the sake of everyone there. “You could be anywhere else but you chose to come here, and that makes me happy. And because I’m happy, I hope I can share some of that happiness with you too!”

I then did my best to play the song from the highest point of that park, the loudest I could, with as much emotion as I could. I deeply wished that I could share the feelings of that song to all the other kids in that town.

By the time I was done, maybe half of the kids remained, and only a few seemed enthusiastic. But there was a couple that did, including the boy I had cheered up before.

“When you’re an idol will you remember us and come back to this town?” he asked.

“Of course!” I answered with a smile. “I’ll never forget you, or this town!”

A group of disgruntled parents eventually came and took their kids away. But one of the mothers seemed seriously upset with me. I felt a bit sad that my wishes to make everyone happy had actually made people angry instead. I didn’t understand, and was confused, but I tried to apologize. It didn’t work, she was still angry and made me escort her back home to my mom.

My mom apologized a lot for the troubles that I caused, and promised it wouldn’t happen again. I started crying. I felt bad seeing my mother apologizing for something I did. When my mom was done, she came to sit down next to me.

“Do you know what you did wrong, Mika?” she asked. I could notice she was teary eyed, which made it hard for me to answer. All I could do was nod shyly at her. “Good, because I don’t think you did anything wrong, so I can’t tell you what to do.”

“Then why were they so upset, Mom?” I asked, confused.

“Because they don’t understand how special you are.”

“So I have to show them!” I told my mom, making a victory sign with my fingers.

“Yes, Mika,” she said, smiling, but still with a tear in her eyes. “You show them.”