Tuesday, August 21, 2012

It Continues To Haunt Me

Now this might come as a shock to some of you and it might not come as a shock at all, but from fifth grade until eighth grade I played the trumpet.  Now, I should be honest, "played" the trumpet is a slight exaggeration.  The truth would be I lugged a large suitcase onto the bus, sat on it, which only heightened the bumps, dumped it in the band room, blared through it, while my counterparts actually played the songs and prayed a day would come when the band room would be blown up.  Fortunately, for my school district the band room was not blown up, but my release came when the band teacher asked me to come down to the band room.  As I entered the room he asked, while pointing to my trumpet case, "Do you know what this is?"  I, slightly confused by his question said, "Um, my trumpet?"  He then said, "Yes.  And you know what, I've never seen it leave.  So, that means you never practice, which means you don't care, which means you should probably give this up."  Ahh, the sweet words of release.

So, that was it.  My days with hearing a bad trumpet were over...and then, I moved into this new apartment.  As we were moving in we started talking to the neighbor below us and she said, "So, Maddie is our youngest. She is great - we just hope you won't be too annoyed by her."  Annoyed by her?  What does Maddie do - bang on the walls?  Scream racist profanities for no apparent reason?  Nope, Maddie plays the trumpet.

As I'm writing this I'm listening to a monkey being shoved into...no, wait, I'm listening to someone attempting to do scales on a TRUMPET!  Play something already!  Geez, even in my six hours of practicing over three years I could at least play a decent "Up On the Rooftop!" 

1 comment:

Laura Kurz said...

You should encourage her to go your route and leave the trumpet at school.

I played the clarinet, which was the ugly stepchild to the flute, remember? (Those who can't flute, clarinet). And I never, ever learned how to read music yet I faked my way through the band for years.