When you’re learning to play bagpipes, you can expect a fair number of questions, the most common of which is undoubtedly, “Why in the world are you learning to play bagpipes?” This is sometimes asked with genuine interest, even admiration, and sometimes in a borderline-polite tone that barely masks the questioner’s utter disappointment in you. That’s not too surprising in a world divided between those who love the pipes and those who hate them, with an extremely narrow middle ground between.

Among pipers on the Internet, there seems to be a fairly common school of thought that “average folks” don’t like the music simply because they’re exposed to so much bad piping.

That may be true in a few cases, but as a general rule … I don’t think so.

I can’t deny that people hear an awful lot of sub-par piping. Players rushed through the basics to help fill out the ranks of a band, long before they’re street-ready. Pipers who take wedding and funeral gigs despite the fact that they can’t properly tune their instrument or blow steady or hit their embellishments with consistency. But it doesn’t automatically follow that such not-ready-for-prime-time playing is the reason people dislike the pipes. That’s like saying there would be more classical music fans if they’d only sit and listen to a few more symphonies played by the world’s top orchestras, or more people would enjoy reading the classics if they took the time to really study War and Peace.

I think people are either born with a love of the pipes or not. If you’re born with it, as I apparently was, the sound of the drones starts something vibrating deep inside your head or heart. If you’re not, the only reaction triggered by the pipes is the overpowering urge to make a joke: “If you stop squeezing it, maybe it will stop screaming,” or “Hey, how did you get the cat inside that bag?”

I’m not saying it’s impossible to acquire a taste for the pipes; many have, later in life. But I wonder if those folks didn’t already have pipe-love deeply embedded on some hidden strand of DNA and just needed the right influence to activate it. In short, I think those who come slowly to the pipes are merely discovering what was there all along.

As for bagpipe jokes … some pipers find them offensive. Not me. I’ve heard some really funny ones. And it’s not as if I need any particular strength of character to withstand an onslaught of humor. I’m not fourteen, after all, when quitting the football team to study bagpipes can create some serious social challenges.

Likewise, I’m not bothered when people give me that aghast stare, and say, “You’re learning to play what?” I’ve accepted the fact that bagpipe music is way outside the mainstream, like just about every other kind of music that I enjoy. I know that those who feel moved to ask the question in that way simply don’t have the gene, and they would never really understand any answer I could give.

And on the bright side, I don’t have to worry about them stealing my iPod, either.