There may have already been a thread like this that I've missed...but I was just curious to hear other teachers'/students' most humorous moments during lesson time.

Here are two of my favorites so far...

One little girl of about seven couldn't remember what her finger numbers were, and always had to look down and manually count them to figure out which notes she should play. I told her to close her eyes and wiggle her left hand fourth finger, right hand second finger, etc. She stopped me in the middle of this exercise to say, very enthusiastically, "But never ever EVER should you lift your middle finger. That's a bad word! I don't know what it is, but it's a bad word."

The second one happened a couple of weeks ago. A student was sightreading a piece and read two harmonic notes as D and G, but played them in flip flopped, with G on the bottom. I wanted him to invert them so I asked him to "flip it around." He was very bewildered by this ambiguous command and slowly turned his hand upside down. I didn't want to burst out laughing and embarrass him so I just sat there until I found something tactical to say. There were a couple of moments of dead silence where we looked in awe at the palm of his hand before I showed him exactly what I meant.

Any other good stories?

I had a 6 year old explain to me why he was too busy to practice this week. He said "I like to beat levels" and he explained how he is at level 12 in Donkey Kong. (I think an older child would know not to use video games as an excuse.) He is adorable and I had to chuckle to myself.

I had a student that left all his music out in the rain, and then he set it down while tending to his rabbits and left it there. I guess the rabbits liked the music. It was the saddest-looking stack of books I'd ever seen. One couldn't help but laugh. I guess this isn't really a "teaching" moment, but he did learn to get the music into the house right away when he gets home.

We were discussing Chopin this week, his 200th birthday and all. One student, wide eyed, asked "Is he still alive?"

Not exactly a teaching moment, because I'm not a teacher, but:

My friend's son, aged 6, was about to give his first public performance. He understood that it was necessary to dress smart for the occasion. However, as his most elegant piece of clothing, he chose a red checked woollen beret.

It took some time for the family to convince him that there is a custom in the music world that piano soloists don't wear berets during the performance.

But he finally accepted it only when he saw in the concert hall that nobody else was wearing a beret.

BTW, the performance went splendidly.

This isn't funny - just sweet. I had chosen recital pieces for a pair of young twins. One liked hers, the other didn't, so I started searching for some other options. I pulled out a book of easy songs from musicals, and the twins started singing as I played. We had an impromtu sing-along. (She chose Edelweis to be her recital piece.)

Well this is about a black bra and teaching!

So now that I've got your attention, here's the story.

I take Friday and Saturday's off, and I washed my favourite black bra. So I hung it on my parent's chair in my studio because no one goes in there but me. So the next teaching day begins and I go in to organize things, and should have seen the bra on the arm of the chair, but it slipped down and was now under the chair.

So I'm teaching a young student and her mother is sitting in the chair, and I look down, and under her, is my black bra. Now I'm in a heat sweat wondering if the mother saw my black bra under the chair, or if the student can see it because it's in perfect view of it lying under the chair. The parent is sitting there hopefully unaware of what's under the chair! But I can see it perfectly!

So the whole lesson, I'm just not really thinking. And because my lessons are back to back, I'm wondering how I'm to get it out without anyone seeing it! I'm trying my hardest to concentrate on the lessons, but all I can think about is how do I solve this problem! If anyone noticed! And how dumb is all this!

So I just left it there under the chair for all the other following 7 lessons!

Being black it was hard to see! I'm hoping!

As I'd like to forget that last story, here's another so I can forget that last one.

One of my teen students was playing a fast piece. And the whole piano was shaking! I have a very small glass grand piano that has been sitting on the piano for years. Anyways, the piano is shaking so much that it is shaking everything "on" the piano. Including this glass grand piano.

So out of the corner of my eye, I see this glass piano bouncing to the edge of the piano, and sliding off, and it smashes onto the keys and breaks into a million pieces.

The student says, "Oh, that didn't just break?"

All I could say was, "One less thing to dust anyways!" I'm still picking pieces of glass out of the keys!

From a student’s point of view:

I was playing a piece during the lesson and the teacher as usually was sitting on a sofa to my right. In this piece, I have a particular difficulty with the left hand in one place and of course he is aware of it.

When I was at the critical moment, I saw, through peripheral vision, him “helping” me by playing his left hand against his thigh. And this distracted me so that I actually played the fragment worse than I might otherwise .

The piece is a rondo and that critical place reoccurs three more times. When I was doing the refrain the second time, I saw him again “helping” me in the same way. So, without much thinking and without turning my head even slightly towards him, I reached with my right hand and pressed his hand to stop it moving and then I continued playing.

And you know what he did? He tucked his hand behind his back and I’m sure he was playing the left-hand part against the sofa during the third and fourth repetition.

Only after I’ve finished, it occurred to me that pressing a hand against another man's thigh might have been interpreted differently in another context...

Neither of us commented on the incident, but until the end of the lesson we avoided looking at each other straight in the face or otherwise we would both burst out laughing uncontrollably.

Today a 5th grade boy was doodling on the piano while I was writing in his note book and he came up with a C7 chord (C-E-G-Bb-C). He was amazed at how cool it sounded and was obviously excited about his new finding. He asked me what in the world this chord was, and rather than giving him the answer, I began to help him figure it out. He soon realized that I knew the answer and was basically leading him to find it. He was rather disappointed and asked, "so it's already known?" Sorry, Dude, you didn't create that chord yourself! It's been in use for centuries!

Love that story! So adorable!

So I'll share another story! I thought this was rather adorable.

So I have two students that are sisters. They come to their lessons on different days. The father just loves these girls. He sits in on their lessons and would give them the moon if they asked. So anyways, he's sitting in on the oldest ones lesson, and his cell phone rings. He checks to see who it is and answer immediately!

He says, "Yes, yes"! So I'm thinking it must be really important for him to answer it during a lesson.

He continues, "Oh alright! yes, yes"!

Then he pauses and says, "Oh what kind of ice cream did you want again?|

The younger one knew her dad was at my house with her sister at a piano lesson and I'm close to a Dairy Queen! So she just wanted ice cream!

He is just the best dad! And the girls know it!