Parents are actually relatively uninterested in what kind of instrument their young offspring might want to learn if they have a serious interest in music. It wasn't really any different for me either.
But in my mind, the cool people, the ones with a guitar, wow, I thought they were all great. In my dreams, of course, the guitar was an electric guitar, so that was probably the mistake. In my parents' eyes, they were all rockers. Yes, back then the term was used for anyone who wore a leather jacket. My mother's thoughts were somehow positioned differently.
They suggested an accordion, so please, how uncool is such a thing? Even back then, a squeezebox like that would have sent you straight to the sidings. My mother saw me standing by the Christmas tree at Christmas and playing Christmas songs.
As I was really good at singing as a child - my mother was a staunch and devoted fan of Heintje - I was also allowed to sing when we were at the doctor's or I don't know where. I didn't really think it was that great.
After I successfully fended off the accordion, we ended up with the piano. Well, it also had keys. I resigned myself to my fate. It wasn't a guitar, but somehow it was ok.
Zack, from then on, the child was allowed to go to piano lessons while others were outside playing. I just never got really good, too little ambition and too lazy.
There were a lot of good, cool bands back then and they had synthesizers. Now I was still interested in keyboard instruments, but the devices were really unaffordable back then and some of them were really cryptic to use.
Years went by and at some point I bought a Yamaha keyboard and a Yamaha DX7, which was reasonably affordable and sounded really great. My neighbors at the time even thought my experimental music was really ok, if only I had practiced more back then..
Even today I still indulge in the synthesizer, I'm still not really good at it, still too lazy to really practice, but I really enjoy it. I can really spend hours tinkering with the controls, sound design is just fun.
In the meantime I've moved in with a few synthesizers, one of my dreams at the time was a Korg MonoPoly, albeit a Behringer replica, a Dave Smith Instruments, a few digital Korgs and Arturias. My dream is still a Moog, but the pricing here is really hefty, even if I consider that I'm not producing anything clever with it.
Looking back, I'm grateful to my mom, because from today's perspective, the piano wasn't such a bad idea.