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I’d Rather Be Eaten By Piranhas Than Be Around Somebody Getting A Divorce

I should know.

Bev Potter
4 min readDec 6, 2022
Photo by Dave Webb on Unsplash

When I was a kid, I took piano lessons from a woman in the village. She had a fancy house which was probably just a normal house, but compared to where I lived (which usually had a cardboard box full of newborn kittens in the kitchen), it was the Ritz.

I took lessons from her for years, which means I had a ringside seat to her divorce.

As everything fell apart, my “lessons” turned into more of a self-study situation. I would practice endless scales and exercises while she and her husband whisper-fought in the kitchen.

One time I accidentally knocked over the piano lamp, probably because I was leaning over the keyboard trying to hear what was going on.

The husband, who was a florid-faced insurance bigwig, stuck his head around the kitchen doorway.

“Everything okay out here?”

“Uh… Yeah.”

They had a daughter who was a lot older than me. The only impression I had of her was that she was angry.

The piano lessons devolved into therapy sessions in which a grown woman complained to a fifth-grader about her life. I…

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Bev Potter
Bev Potter

Written by Bev Potter

Legal secretary by day, insomniac by night. Ally. BA, MA. Humor, pop culture, and things that make you think. My weekly-ish newsletter is bevpotter.substack.com

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