Care and Feeding of Digital Pianos      On Barbies: when I was a boy, my only experience with Barbie dolls was through my friends' sisters. (One of which was Heather, as a matter of fact) From those early observations I had no choice but to assume that the natural state of a Barbie is naked, headless, and in a pile next to the toilet.
     Only now do I realize that there are less violent lifestyles available for everyone's favorite polymer beauty. My daughter Samantha, for instance, keeps her population of Barbie and Barbie-like fashion dolls more or less fully clothed, and stores them all in a blue plastic tackle box.
      Samantha was playing quietly with those Barbies last night as I sat down at the piano to warm up. I soon noticed that the keys felt funky and were sticking together. Closer examination showed that there were broken pieces of raw spaghetti stuck between many of the keys. First of all, my piano is allergic to semolina, and should only eat wheat noodles. Second of all, this is my only piano and I can't afford to replace it! I proceed to the living room where fifty percent of my genetic material was swapping shoes between various dollies.

     "Samantha," I ask, "did you put spaghetti in Daddy's piano?" In answer, Sam shakes her head "no," and doubles her concentration on the Barbies' shoe choices.
     "Sam. Look at me."
     She looks.
     "Did you put... spaghetti... in Daddy's piano?" She can't meet my eyes, and casts about the room for something to look at. Finally, she knods "yes."
     "Sam, do you think its good to put spaghetti in the piano?" Her eyes register a bit of hope, and she optimistically knods her head "yes".
     "Sam... do you really think its good to put spaghetti in the piano?" The hope dies along with her tentative smile, and she looks down, shaking her head.
     "Then why did you put spaghetti in the piano?"
     Her eyes begin to tear up and she begins nervously wringing the long hair of Rapunzel Barbie, whose head quietly creaks in protest.
     "I was eating the spahzghetty, and I dropped some inna piano, and then my Care Bear was going to fix it!" Care bear? Was it going to remove the spaghetti from the piano by loving it really hard?
     "Sam, you were not eating raw spaghetti. So why did you put the spaghetti in the piano?" She looks up at me with her pretty little face and I get the dubious pleasure of watching her carefully held composure crumble, and tears start running down her now-red cheeks toward her rumpled little chin.
     "I don't know," she cries, dumps Barbie unceremoniously onto the floor and rushes me. With an involuntary grunt, I absorb the full brunt of her desperate hug as she begins dehydrating herself through occular emissions all over my leg. I gently turn her head up to look me in the face.
     "Sammy, promise me you won't put food in the piano again."
     Sobbing loudly, she increases the force of her hug to the point where she could safely stand in for a tourniquet should I ever sever a limb. "I promise!"
     "What do you promise, Sam?"
     "Not to put spahzgetty in the piano."
     "Say, 'I promise not to have food around the piano,' ok?" She knods. "Say it, Sam."
     "I promise not to eat food in the piano, Daddy."

Close enough.

I spent an hour carefully taking the piano, a Roland HP-327 with complicated weighted key assemblies, apart. Spaghetti removed, I reassembled the thing and found I was in no mood to try to play Curl, a sad-sack tune, so I did the far less emotional Three In Eight instead. SafeT's Guide to Care and Feeding of Digital Pianos  ¶ 9:41 AM