We live for our children most of the time. Okay, there are some parents who put their amusement and sense of well-being before that of their offspring but by and large we have been conditioned to give our kids what we ourselves did not have and try to get some vicarious kicks out of seeing them enjoy pastimes we were denied or just missed somehow.

Both Adam and Franny got guitars when they were preteens and lessons from the same place that I bought them: the Musicians’ General Store on Court Street. Franny never really took to it, propelled more by a fantasy born of School of Rock than a real desire to spend hours in her room practicing her fingering, while Adam at 22 is pretty accomplished. This is one of the only fringe benefits of a fairly friendless adolesence: mirror-star mastery.

So when I saw MGS closing its doors for the final time in the fall (the landlord had spiked the rent to make room for another gym, when what Cobble Hill really needs is another Starbucks — you can walk blocks before finding a Frappacino!) I went in and plunked some money down on a guitar for myself. Now all I had to do was learn how to play it.

I grew up around musicians. LIke most kids my age I wanted a guitar after seeing the Beatles (though I actually I think I had wanted one when I listened to the Clancy Brothers, who were bigger than the Beatles in my pre-ten-year-old imagination) but my parents couldn’t afford one and I was always quick to take no for an answer. By the time I was in high school I numbered a few fine guitarists among my friends but it never occurred to me to ask one of them to teach me even a few simple chords. Even though the ability to play, the very possession of guitar, increased their popularity and success with chicks exponentially, I clung to my loser status, playing air guitar in my room and imagining myself a star.

If it was fear that kept me from trying to learn then, I realized I would need a new excuse now. I had the time, the money and absolutley no expectation of being anything other than a kitchen plunker in my old age. “I don’t have any fantasies of playing on stage at my age,” I told my guitar teacher on our first meeting. “I just want to be able to strum a few Bob Dylan songs when I’m alone and blue.”

By the end of our first lesson he had taught me the chords to “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” — which is not to say that I have learned them. In fact, after six lessons it’s safe to say I have not learned much of anything and have scarcely improved though he has demonstrated the patience of a saint as he watches me making chords with the agility of the frost bitten. If Adam has natural ability (which his teacher often said) I may have just the opposite. But as I try to make power chords that bear some resemblance to “All Along the Watchtower,” I can honestly say that my mind is engaged with no other task. I have no attention in those moments for any of life’s concerns. Including my children.