Long Live the Pen Tappers!

I have to say - and I don't know if this is just me - that one thing I just cannot stand in class is students tapping their pens - incessantly! Maybe it's some primal urge to express ourselves in rhythm or something, but I seem to spend a lot of class time 'hammering' the tappers.

And then I watch this...

This is Erik Mongrain from Montreal. I stumbled across this video this evening and was blown away. Reading his bio I see that he is completely self-taught.  To develop a style like this surely must require a good dose of the tinkering mentality and the space just to be creative.

Now I have no doubt at all that if I were to speak to his old high school teachers, they would tell me that he used to tap his pen in class.  If that is so, all I can say is, "Long Live the Pen Tappers!"