What inspired you to first start play the ukulele?

I don 't know if anybody will read this or if this is the right place to post it but here goes...
This is my story. What's yours?

People often shout at me over the racket of our daily lives: "Hey Cap! How did you come to be strumming that little ukulele?" When there's a lull in the noise I tell them about two "movie" moments in my life. These scenes inspired a love affair with this small, four-string, wooden box.

The first is a blurry scene from the movie "A Thousand Clowns." You can picture my older brother and me sitting in the dark in our cushy velvet seats during a Saturday matinee at Denver's Towne theater. As an impressionable 14-year-old, I was enchanted with the story of non-conformity in the face of practical necessity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd-e62bt1sc

Later, as with many young male players of fretted instruments, I used my uke to (like Dale Carnegie) win friends and influence...girls. And, I have to say, it worked. (Yes, and a few times, a pretty female prospect would wake up in the early a.m. to find me crooning and strumming quietly outside her bedroom window.)

Years later, the following scene from Steve Martin's "The Jerk" also reinforced my love of the ukulele.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyinJyWUhas

I will close by recommending the full version of "A Thousand Clowns." It is a mostly forgotten and very funny classic from optimistic mid-60's urban America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpjN97qJ0bk&t=174s

-- Cap Hamilton