Spend enough time talking to me and you’ll quickly discover two things. 1. I’m a video game addict. 2. I am in love with all things relating to playing the guitar. An unusual combination for a twenty-something female from Connecticut. But being of this strange breed, I do in fact spend a good deal of time with my hands either firmly planted on a video game controller or wrapped around the neck of a guitar. And should I not be doing one of these things, rest assured I’m probably shopping for something from one of these categories.

I spent some time last weekend at one of my favorite guitar store chains – Daddy’s Junky Music. I’ve never had anything but good experiences with this store and it’s one of the few guitar stores that I enjoy going to. The staff is always friendly and I’ve never felt discouraged from picking up an instrument and messing around with it. At some of the larger, more notorious shops there’s something intimidating about simply walking through the door. This has never been the case at Daddy’s. Anyway, I digress.

I was on a mission last weekend. My Peavey Valveking had been causing me some distress and I am on the never-ending quest for signature tone. The Daddy’s location I had picked out that day had a Marshall AVT150HX head up for sale at a very reasonable price which I knew I’d nearly be able to knock in half with the trade of my Peavey. And so I made the trip to Daddy’s, chatted with a salesguy who set up the halfstack for me while I fetched a Les Paul from where it hung on the wall. A few short minutes later I was jamming happily with genuine Marshall tone. I played through some of my band’s originals (find us at Myspace and add us as your friends. We will, we will rock you. She Eats Planets) and then switched to a few of the cover songs She Eats Planets is preparing for an upcoming covers-only show. The hybrid tube/solid state amp impressed me and soon I was doing a little improvisation.

During my rock-out session in the guitar store, I happened to hear a little girl of about six say to her mother, “who’s playing guitar in here?” Her mother pointed out that I was perched on a stool only a few feet away and the little girl wandered in my direction. She stood about arms length away from the Paul’s headstock and watched. She didn’t say anything for a few minutes, but simply watched. In the meantime, her mother and brother had moved on and her mother was talking to a salesperson about a child-sized Daisy Rock acoustic guitar that was displayed in the corner, almost shunned from the other less pink and glittery guitars. I stopped playing long enough to fiddle with some of the knobs featured on the front of the AVT150 (there are many and I’m still learning what they all do.) and looked up at the girl. I’m not a big fan of small children for reasons that may never fully be explained but I smiled at the girl nonetheless. This emboldened the child and she decided it was okay to talk to me:

“You play good,” she said.

“Thanks, ” I said. “I’ve been playing for a long time.”

“Really? Did you start playing when you were little?”

“Well, maybe not as young as you, but a few years older. I was about 10 when I got my first guitar.”

“I’m going to play guitar, too,” she said. “My mom said she’d get me one. That one.” She smiled big and pointed to the Daisy Rock.

“That’s a very pretty guitar.”

“It’s okay.”

“Just okay? What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t like that big hole in the middle of it. It looks broken. And it sounds funny.” She looked at the Les Paul I was playing. “That one doesn’t have any holes in it.”

“Well, this is an electric guitar. It doesn’t need a hole in the middle. That guitar is an acoustic. Without that hole it wouldn’t make much sound.”

“Why doesn’t that guitar sound like yours?”

I had to think for a moment. Trying to explain the differences in types of guitars to a six-year-old is no easy feat.

“Electric guitars are for rock and roll music. That crunchy sound,” I fingered a power chord and strummed the guitar, “is rock guitar. Acoustic guitars aren’t crunchy but they’re nice.”

“I like the crunchy sound better.”

Now it was my turn to smile. Here was a rockstar in training.

“So do I,” I admitted.

She looked back at the wall of electric guitars and screwed up her face.

“My brother plays crunchy guitar but it doesn’t look like any of these.” She pointed at the strings on the Paul. “It doesn’t have these. It’s got pretty buttons on it.”

“That’s a video game. Guitar Hero. I like that game.”

“He plays it really good. I want to play like that.”

I considered whether I should go on my tirade about the differences between the plastic video game controller or whether I should just smile and nod.

“Well, there’s a big difference between playing the game and playing a real guitar. Playing a real guitar is much, much harder.”

“Then I want to play a real guitar.”

Shortly thereafter the child’s mother came by and they left the store with the pink, glittery Daisy Rock acoustic guitar. I left a few moments later with the Marshall head in hand. It was a long drive home but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had just encountered a member of the next wave of female guitarists. She seemed to have the drive and determination to learn to play and I’m optimistic that she’ll take that Daisy Rock and play it until she outgrows it. I wouldn’t be surprised to find her in that same store in a few years looking for something a little more “crunchy.”

Once I got home I plugged my new head into the Marshall 1960A cab I’d bought the day before and played with my guitars for a few hours before switching my heavy Les Paul for the much lighter video game controller. And as the colored gems flashed by on the screen in time to Poison’s “Talk Dirty To Me” I realized that while I love Guitar Hero, playing my guitar is much more fun.

Anyone can play a video game but it takes a little more to be a guitar hero. Maybe I met a future hero in that music store that day. Or maybe this six-year-old girl was just a glimpse of myself some 19 years ago.