Death To "The Nutcracker"

I enjoy the majority of music written by Tchaikovsky, but I despise music from The Nutcracker. So, so much. Even more than I hate cleaning. Whenever I hear it, I turn it off immediately and if it isn't possible to turn it off immediately, I run out of the room with my ears covered. I seriously start to get vomity.

I don't consider myself any sort of musical genius or anything, but I think I'm a fairly good piano player. I've been playing the piano for so long that I really don't get very nervous when I play, even in front of large groups of people. Because I don't get super nervous, as long as I practice the song enough, I don't usually make many mistakes (at least not big ones that people would notice). When I used to take piano lessons, I would actually look forward to recitals and performing in front of people.

However, there was one year around Christmas time, I believe I was in 9th or 10th grade, that I had a horrible experience that caused me to associate The Nutcracker with excruciating pain. I had a soccer game right before my piano recital, so by the time I arrived at the recital, I was late and sweaty and flustered. I had to play my song, which was titled The Nutcracker Medley, about 20 seconds after I arrived. To make a long story short, my performance was so bad that even my mom couldn't tell me it wasn't as horrible as I thought it was. By the time I finished the song, I'm pretty sure I was crying and I sobbed hysterically as I ran out of the room, but not before I told my piano teacher that I was never playing the piano again. (It's true; I'm about as dramatic as it's possible to be).

Luckily, I had a piano teacher whose self-worth is also determined by how well she plays the piano, so she completely understood and gave me a week off before I calmed down and went back to piano lessons.

But to this day, I honestly can't listen to music from The Nutcracker without feeling like someone punched me in the stomach.