For those of you who have never been, a guitar store is an intimidating place. Along with rack after rack of expensive guitars and amps bigger than I am, there are rooms full of equipment that I'm not sure that anyone, including the employees, knows what they do.

But the other patrons are by far the most intimidating part of the store. There are many guitars set up to try out, and theoretically you can grab any one off the rack to try, but it seems like the average person trying out a guitar can play Stairway to Heaven backwards with the guitar behind their back. Plus, the tryout amps are all huge and loud, making sure everyone in the store can hear me butcher Cherub Rock. It would be like if you went to Best Buy to try out a digital camera and every blurry picture of the memory card rack you took got put up on the gigantic plasmas in the TV section.

The other day there was a sale at the local guitar store and my guitar picks are about worn down to nothing (probably because I hold them incorrectly when I play), so I figured I'd grab some new ones. While I was at the store, I saw that the Wah-Wah pedals were on sale, so I went to try one out. After about 5 minutes of fiddling with it, I still could not get it to make a sound, and the employees were starting to look at me and shake their heads, so I paid for my $4 bag of picks, got my free pack of strings from the sale, and left the store in shame. This would be why after 10 years I still play $99 scratched guitar. Poorly.