When my Grandpa Botch passed, I got an acoustic guitar which actually was my Dad's, but he didn't have a musical bone in his body so it sat in a closet for decades. It came with a book "How to play the Hawaiian Guitar", and I took to it quickly (it wasn't built as a Hawaiian, but the neck was so warped you couldn't possibly finger a chord on it without julienning your fingertips). Sometime towards the end of school I saw a "lap steel" guitar in a pawnshop, and soon was playing that (one tuning key couldn't be turned, so I played "in between the frets" so I'd match concert pitch/the band; thank goodness that string never broke).
While playing in a popular country band in Ohio (~'84), I saw a beginner's pedal steel (in another pawn shop!) and saved up my gig money, finally purchasing it, which I played from then until about '91, and sold it in '92. Fun instrument, and this video gave me a lot of the history I wasn't aware of (interesting that I've played 3 of the 4 instruments in the lineage, never played dobro). They can get very complicated, up to 4 necks (all in different tunings), 9 footpedals, and 8 knee-levers; my beginner's model had 3 footpedals and one knee.
Would love to be able to sit at one, one more time, just to see if any of those synapses are still there. Good times.