【美国电台节目】永远忘不了，那次小小的鼓励

Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at Hidden Brain. "My Unsung Hero" tells the stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else.

When Karl Goldstein was 12, he began taking piano lessons with a teacher who had a reputation for being demanding. Her name was Alice Shapiro.

KARL GOLDSTEIN: One time she said, you need to memorize that movement of the Beethoven sonata for next week. And my first reaction was, well, I don't know if I can do that. And she snapped at me. She said, well, if you say you won't do it, you can't do it, then you won't be able to do it. You need to do it. And I want to hear it memorized next week.

I wound up just not really enjoying the lessons, feeling very uncomfortable and deciding that I wanted to stop. So I told my parents that I wanted to stop taking lessons. And they just agreed right away. I said, I'll go on my own, or I'll take another instrument.

And at what would have been the next to the last lesson for the semester, Alice decided that she had to say something. And she said, you know, Karl, I really think you should keep taking lessons. You're not ready to stop. That's all she said. I responded by saying, OK, I'll stay.

It was as if all I wanted was just this little sign, a sign from her that she cared about me. And her saying that just gave me some kind of thing to grab on to. And it turned everything around. Within a few weeks, we had one lesson where we were both giggling so much, we couldn't stop. And within a few months she was showing me things about music that I had never known before.

And years later, she became my mentor and my confidant. And I went into music, went to Juilliard, became a musician, became a piano teacher. And that's what I've been doing for the past 50 years. And I owe it all to that one precious moment with my unsung hero, Alice Shapiro.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHANG: That was Karl Goldstein of Berkeley, Calif. Alice Shapiro died of cancer in 1985. This is Goldstein playing the piece that he performed at her funeral.

To share the story of your unsung hero, record a voice memo on your phone and email it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.