I was 19 when I got my first guitar. I chose it from the lower end at the back of the local music store. I remember it costing $119 but was on sale for $99. It was a Prelude CC-24. Being on the broke side back then, I entreated my best friend to buy it for me for my b-day. She finally caved and said she would. That was 1988. My friend moved away shortly thereafter and we fell out of touch. I never made friends easily, so I was by myself much of time. I loved driving out to the boonies, parking at the end of a desolate cul-de-sac or down by the riverside and getting high, sitting on the hood of my car picking and strumming, gazing up at the clouds by day and the stars by night - ya, I was kinda hippy-ish. Over the next decade that guitar was my boon companion. It was constantly in my hands, in the back seat of my car, and just omnipresent in my life. When I moved it always found a place in plain view but I noticed that everytime I picked it up it had gathered some dust and I'd spend some time cleaning it up before plucking at it for 10 minutes and setting it back into it's place. Then I found a nice case for it thinking that it would keep it clean. Again life took charge and things changed, multiple times. I vaguely recall moving that case with me wherever I went, but I never opened it anymore. Years went by, then decades. Then one day I found myself alone again and thought about an old friend, now long lost, and her gift. I dug that old case out of the back of the closet and opened it. A pang of loss hit me when I saw that old guitar. So many things had happened since I'd had it, so many years had passed... family had passed, dear friends had come and gone, some never to return; campsites and well-loved dogs, old homes and haunts long abandoned. I lifted it from the case and felt the familiar neck in my hand again. Folding my body around it seemed so natural, so right. Something was flowing back into me, memories of that stoned, long-haired mountain boy playing "Blackbird" while sitting on the hood of that old car at the end of an empty cul-de-sac while gazing at the stars. How long ago? 10, 20, 30 years...? I realized, poignantly, that I'd somehow grown old. My fingers clumsily fumbled over the frets and I tried a chord only to be met with a foul discord. Not unexpected. The strings were ancient, it was grossly out of tune, there was a vibrating buzz coming from the bridge... After a bit of TLC this old friend still sounds as good as I remember. I know it's just a old $100 guitar but the memories it evokes everytime I hold and play it always give me deep thoughts, smiles, and ya, sometimes tears.