what you need to know about the guiro

January 22, 2002, 01:32 pm

Last night, I had the worst nightmare ever: I was at some highschool gymnasium and there were these little punkrock kids everwhere. I had my guitar stuff there and was setting it up. It was like an audition... it was like my mind took my memories of trying out for all-district/all-state band and superimposed "the scene" on it. It was weird.

And while I was waiting for my audition, I decided to go somewhere. Like eat or go to the bathroom or something. And when I came back, my guitar wasn't in its case; it was on the floor. And I ran to it, and the strings were all ripped off and the bridge pickup was hanging out of the body by wires and there were scratches and huge dents in the fretboard and body. And I screamed! And cried! And panicked!

Then, for some odd reason, my mom was there. She was trying to get me to calm down, but I wasn't having it. I kept going on about how I'll never get a guitar like it again and how it's such a crime that someone would do this.

And I realized how really upset I was and how I was physically distressing myself. So I was thought, "This is just a dream. I shouldn't get so upset. I'm going to get up now so I don't have to endure this anxiety." And I made myself wake up and then ran to my guitar case to make sure she was okay. Phew.



Because you need to know about guiros:

Pronunciation: 'wE-(")rO, 'gwir-(")O
Function: noun
Etymology: American Spanish güiro, literally, calabash
Date: 1898
: a percussion instrument of Latin-American origin made of a
serrated gourd and played by scraping a stick along its surface