Why Is Gmail Nudging Me? (Or, Buying the Guitar I Had as a Child)

I don’t know when it was implemented, but Gmail has something called “Nudge.” (A name reminiscent of Facebook’s ill-fated “Poke.”) Nudge surfaces emails to your inbox if a reply hasn’t been sent by you or a recipient after a certain number of days.

I’ve noticed it a few times but never bothered to disable it. It seemed pointless, and I just ignored or re-archived the messages.

Until the other day.

A few days ago, I talked about missing out on the purchase of an old guitar that just happened to be the very same model as my first guitar. The guitar I got for Christmas when I was 8 or 9 years old. I emailed the seller, but they didn’t respond. The Craigslist ad disappeared, and I figured that was that.

Then Gmail nudged the message back to my inbox. I assumed that the randomized Craigslist email address would stop working when the ad was no longer live. But just for the hell of it, I resent the email, and the seller replied.

Yes, he still had the guitar; yes, it was still for sale.

Oh my.

Teisco/Schafer guitar late 60s

So, long story tedious, yesterday we met up at the 29 Palms Starbucks, and I handed him a small wad of cash (very small in vintage electric guitar terms), and he handed me the guitar.

I didn’t buy the guitar because it’s a magnificent instrument, it’s not. I bought it for the reason baby boomers buy half the things we buy: nostalgia.

And nostalgia is a good enough reason for me.

It’s really something to pick up that guitar again. As a kid, I didn’t know how to play or even tune a guitar. But I messed around with it to the extent I could, then it kind of disappeared over the years. I don’t recall when we parted ways, but a few years later I managed to get my hands on a “real” guitar, so my first instrument was simply forgotten.

I said it’s not a magnificent instrument, but surprisingly, playing this guitar now, it’s nowhere near as clunky or awful as I expected it to be. It’s actually quite fun to play. Which is why, I suppose, the old Tesico guitars are still popular with a particular type of player today.

Back in the day, we mocked Made in Japan products as being shoddy without even really thinking about it (in the same way many people see Chinese-made products now). But in retrospect, we’re realizing that many of those Japanese products weren’t shoddy at all. On the contrary, they were well made and, as we see now, some were very long-lasting.

All I know is I’m glad this particular guitar lasted long enough for me to find it. And to think, living here in the middle of nowhere, that I only had to drive15 minutes to get it? It’s kind of mind-boggling.

I guess we were meant to be together. 🙂

day 52

WRITTEN BY A HUMAN

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