Music is my way of keeping my brain from turning to mush

If you read books and articles about longevity and the ways in which you're supposed to take care of yourself as you get older, you will inevitably come across the admonition to challenge your mind continually.

Whether it's learning a new language, taking a class, or just doing difficult crossword puzzles every day, the idea is that your brain is like a muscle. And as with any muscle, it must be constantly worked or else it will eventually lose functionality.

I would argue my brain has already atrophied somewhat, but my weapon of choice in the fight against cognitive decline is the tenor saxophone.

As I've mentioned before, I take weekly private lessons from a marvelous sax player and teacher named Ed Michaels. Ed is a talented musician and educator, and just an all-around good guy. I get excited for Mondays at 5:30pm, which is when I get the Google Duo notification indicating that Ed is calling and it's time for our virtual lesson.

These lessons, and my subsequent practice sessions throughout the week, are not easy. Nor would I want them to be.

Ed throws a lot at me, but he does it with a smile and always with the encouragement that he's doing it because I'm "an A-plus student." Whether he's just saying that to make me feel good or he really means it, it doesn't matter. It always inspires me to work harder.

And hard work it is, as I've never formally learned, for example, chord structures. Seventh chords are the foundation of jazz improvisation, so I spend a lot of time playing outlines and scales around major seventh, dominant seventh, minor seventh, half-diminished, and diminished 7th chords.

These are, as Ed calls them, "The Big Five." And the sound, feel, and sax fingerings for them do not come naturally to me. Thus, I have to drill myself continually.

I'm getting there. I'm no Charlie Parker, nor will I ever be, but slowly, I'm getting closer to playing like Bird than I ever have.

It's not only fun, it's also making my mind work hard, which is largely why I do it.

Forty years from now, when I'm a drooling mess and about to keel over, my goal is be able to play the best solo on "Autumn Leaves" you'll ever want to hear.

I almost can't wait.

I write exactly one check and use exactly one stamp each month

The checkbook sits on our computer desk, usually buried under a stack of papers and seldom touched.

Open it to the ledger and you will find that so far in 2021, we have used three checks. All three were written by me.

As our good friend Harry Styles sang, it's a sign of the times, friends.

Terry has always handled our finances, and as I've noted many times, she handles them well. Back in The Day (whenever that was exactly), this entailed writing out a long series of checks to utility companies, banks, and all manner of organizations of which, as the family breadwinner, I was only vaguely aware.

Jerry Seinfeld once remarked on the fact that whereas men wrote a couple of checks each month, women went through, like, a book a day.

This was not far from the truth, albeit way back in the 90s.

Now, of course, Terry pays all of our bills online. Not only is there no actual currency involved in these transactions, there's no actual, tangible anything. It's all electronic. It's fast, it's efficient, and it's convenient.

It seems the only reason for us to maintain paper checks around the house right now is Ed Michaels.

Ed, as I mentioned not long ago, is my saxophone teacher. He is an accomplished musician, nice guy, and all-around amazing tenor player. I love learning from him.

Ed is also old school. He and I do online lessons Mondays at 5:30pm at the low, low cost to me of just $15 a week. I pay Ed a month in advance, and I do so by mailing him a check, at his request.

Whereas Ed is good at using Google Duo for our lessons, he prefers that monthly check in the mail to, say, Venmo or PayPal.

So once every four weeks, I make out a check to Ed, address an envelope, take my monthly stamp from the book in the file drawer, and stick it on that envelope. Because we so rarely do this kind of thing nowadays, it feels like a long, laborious process.

So spoiled we are.

I'm OK with it, though, if only because it's a nice link to a past that feels increasingly distant. I wrote my first checks at the age of 18. In fact, that checking account I opened at Ohio Savings Bank as a teenager is still our primary checking account to this day.

Going further back, I also collected stamps for a brief time when I was something like 10. Stamps had (and still have) a mystique of their own, and philately is a worthwhile hobby, as far as I'm concerned.

So thanks, Ed, you chronologically gifted musical genius. If it wasn't for you, I'm not sure I would still remember exactly what to write on a check. I hope I never forget.

Having a private instructor makes me feel rich

Until recently, I had never had a private saxophone lesson in my life.

I learned to play as a fourth-grader at Mapledale Elementary School in a group setting with other beginning saxophonists (NOTE: The late Men at Work multi-instrumentalist Greg Ham used to pronounce that word, perhaps a bit tongue in cheek, as sax-OPH-oh-nists, which I just love. I will never say it another way.)

We would squeak and squawk our way through 30-minute lessons with the wonderful Mr. Chuck Baker, a saint of a man who taught elementary and middle school music and band. He is/was a clarinetist by trade but, like most music educators, could work his way around just about any instrument.

That was the extent of my formal training. Whatever else I've learned on the sax over 40 years of playing came on the job during wind ensemble and jazz band rehearsals.

Until now. Now I pay an amazing professional saxophonist named Ed Michaels the criminally low fee of $15 a week to give me lessons every Monday at 5:30pm via Google Duo.

We just started a few weeks ago and already Ed is putting me through my paces. I'm playing scales and etudes, familiarizing myself with the Circle of Fourths (which I should have known about years ago), and even learning the right way to play certain notes on the horn.

Mr. Baker, for example, taught me to play B-flat the way I believe a clarinet player does, pressing down the first finger on each hand. This is at best an alternate way of playing it on sax, and Ed is pushing me to learn the right way, which means undoing years and years of doing it the wrong way.

This is not easy at any stage of life, but maybe particularly so at age 51. But I'm getting through it.

Anyway, the point is, I have Ed, a formally trained expert on the instrument, teaching me. There is something about that arrangement I find to be very cool.

Like I'm Louis XIV having the court musician teaching me the tricks of his trade. Except I lack the power to order Ed to the guillotine.

Not that I would want to. He is a wonderfully nice and patient man who loves the sax and clearly enjoys teaching it to others.

Which is good, because that B-flat thing is giving me troubles. When I get it right, I fully expect him to give me a smiley face sticker in recognition of my accomplishment.