Stories about people's Für Elise experiences

Für Elise and the alarm clock

This story was submitted by PJ and was added around July 2009.

I wasn't old at all, maybe 5-7 years old, when I first heard the beautiful melody of Für Elise, and I fell in love right away. For a birthday I received a cute plastic pink kitten alarm clock that would play a simplified version of Für Elise when the alarm went off. I drove my family crazy by making the alarm play without shutting it off, over and over and over again, for days, for weeks, for a very long time. I can't remember how many times I begged my mother to get me new batteries.

The melody effectively stuck in my head, so when the family inherited an old piano from a dead relative, I immediately wanted to learn how to play it. I was probably around 8-10 years old by then. I made the pink kitten play the melody as I tried to hit the right keys, and with a little help from my older brother I finally learned this simplified version and it has since then been the very first melody I play whenever I get my hands on a piano (which sadly isn't often enough).

I have never actually learned to play the "proper" version with two hands, even though I have met many people who can. Maybe one day I will.

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