Yesterday, we bought OSFO an electronic keyboard that really looks like a piano at The Guitar Center. Hepcat, Teen Spirit, and I were at the store returning Teen Spirit’s right-handed electric guitar for a lefty.  While there, we checked out the keyboards.

And there it was.

Not cheap or anything — it was a reasonably priced floor model of a Casio with 88 weighted keys and the look and feel of a very small piano. The most important thing: the weighted keys.

Hepcat wanted to get a portable keyboard but I liked this one for its faux piano look. It really played into my fantasy that a home should have a piano — not a keyboard on an ironing board type of stand.

It wasn’t really a price thing. Hepcat thought the portable keyboard would be great "in case OSFO  starts a band or something. It’ll be easier to move," he said.

But I was thinking — traditional piano, piano bench, a metronome sitting on top… Of course this thing has an electronic metronome and over 60 sounds. It’s pretty high tech.  But within a traditional-looking piano body.

What can I say, I grew up with a grand piano in the foyer of our Upper West Side apartment. It was a Knabe, given to my grandparent’s when they were married in 1920. My sister took piano lessons from an old woman named Mrs. Halstead and my father played a made up kind of atonal jazz and his take on the Goldberg variations.

Hepcat left it up to me "and my vision of what I wanted," he said. We had the piano delivered and it arrived less than two hours later. Not without a crisis. The delivery guy left the power supply back at the store and there was no manual.

But we got all that ironed out and within an hour or so, OSFO was practicing for her Thursday lesson. There’s a quiet switch on the piano so we’re hoping not to disturb our neighbors.

OSFO has been wandering over to the piano a lot, picking out her music, getting ready for her first recital in a month.

It’s just the way I always wanted it to be…