But before he even got to me, someone had spouted out a list of at least five or six instruments, which beats my count. Eventually, I got to answer his (somewhat rhetorical) question of, "How many keys does a piano have?" when he turned specific and asked who played piano. Along with three trumpet valves (which he erroneously referred to as "keys") and six guitar strings, the point was that in the same way that there are infinite combinations of notes despite the limited ways of playing them, there are infinite combinations of a limited number of words.
But anyway, the non-linguistic point of the story is that someone else plays more instruments than I do and that I was sort of jealous of that. But in the good sense of jealousy (if such a thing exists). It's like when you want to outdo someone, not for the sake of beating them, but for the sake of fulfilling potential that you know you have. That's what I experienced: this feeling that I'm not learning how to play instruments at a fast enough rate. (Though currently, I'm trying to become more proficient at harmonica and re-introduce trombone to my repertoire.)
I can still faintly remember a day in 6th grade band when the director said something about how in college he learned how to play every instrument to some degree. And I was really impressed by that. Even now, I aspire to do that. I'm just limited by the cost of obtaining more instruments and the time necessary to learn and practise them. (Also, the lack of space in which to put them.)
But until then - and still even then - what I have to remember is that it's not necessarily the number of instruments that you can play; it's how well you can play any instrument. Knowing the basics of every wind instrument won't really help you unless you can meaningfully play something on them.
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