How strange to be older than an army specialist. One gray, drizzly day at Fort Campbell, in Kentucky, a 24-year-old firefighter with brown hair, a pale complexion, and a self-deprecating sense of humor was struggling to play a C major scale with both hands on a little keyboard. As I watched her instructor, a blond 101st Airborne Division Band member named Richard, walk her through the underhand motions of her thumbs, I remembered my own early discomfort in piano lessons. “This is gonna look ridiculous,” she said.
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