I happily acknowledge the pain that covers my fingertips. It reminds me that I did something good. It was the steel strings of the guitar that pressed into the flesh of my clumsy fingers. I try again i take lessons The third attempt.

The first time, when I was eleven, I ran into a somewhat exalted suburban maestro who couldn't seem to get over the fact that instead of conducting at the Royal Albert Hall, he had to teach chubby prepubescents like me "Aramsamsam" on the guitar in Castrop-Rauxel.

The success was manageable: When I first appeared with Grandma in the living room, she burst into tears of laughter, looked at my mom while I mercilessly pulled out "All my ducklings": "Gitte, and you pay 50 marks a month for that?!"

My name is Mickey Beisenherz. In Castrop-Rauxel I am a world star. Elsewhere I have to pay for everything myself. I am a multimedia (single) general store. Author (Extra3, Jungle Camp), presenter (ZDF, NDR, ProSieben, ntv), podcast host ("Apocalypse and Filter Coffee"), occasional cartoonist. There are things that strike me. Sometimes even upset me. And since the impulse control is constantly jammed, they probably have to get out. My religious symbol is the crosshair. The razor blade is my dance floor. And just now it itches in the feet again.

My mother paid so many Deutschmarks for nothing and again nothing. So she wanted to avert her own fate of being an unsportsmanlike child and signed me up for tennis lessons. Unfortunately, back then I had as much talent for becoming Boris Becker as Boris Becker had for becoming Jeff Bezos.

It was the time when tennis coaches were wretched fellows with "Playboy" bunny chains on thick chest hair and used-car dealer haircuts. Only my balls were more devious than these guys. It is part of my incarnation that I always knew how to comment on my failure in an amusing way (for me). The only thing I remember is the memorable moment when my coach offered me a Deutsche Mark to just shut up for a whole hour. Well, what can I say. The money was lost in the first five minutes.

I have rarely had fruitful experiences with lessons of all kinds. When I was seven, I wanted to do the same as my big brother, who was very successful in football, and take part in football training. Unfortunately, the trainers from back then weren't the empathetic district league thugs of today, but rather blunt bratwurst stand dictators in balloon silk who let "the little wankers" run laps at the beginning of the lesson.

My club career was over with the first training session, and Andi, embarrassed by his brother who had failed at the club, insisted on planting the thought in me that the coach would visit me like a god of vengeance in the next hour. A few days later, when the doorbell rang downstairs, I was crouched behind the sofa: "Omma, don't open the door. This is the trainer coming to get me!"

My second attempt at the guitar course a few years ago failed because the teacher tried very hard to immediately correct my gripping position and, much worse, wrote down notes and numbers for me in the first few hours. Old math traumas broke out, my head closed, my receptiveness was gone. Alone, he never let me get into playing.

My current teacher does it better. he lets me play It's the same as in sports: if we're allowed to play, we don't even feel the pain.

And when I play the first songs in the living room, after about 35 years of failure, I am finally praised: "That sounds nice, Daddy." This mixture of charm and complete mendacity, in turn, nobody can teach you. That's easy.