Flash Back

This morning as I was sitting in my car waiting for my co-worker to arrive, I was listening to the BBC. The BBC airs a variety of things - mostly world news and classical music. I don't usually listen to talk radio, but I was especially interested in what the British had to say about the 'beefed up security' at various financial institutions in America. After all, I do work at a bank and I was getting ready to walk in there to perform my part of the security check. After the news blip was finished I was too lazy to lean over to change the channel. Classical music isn't usually my thing - when it occurred to me, I was humming along. And then it hit me - I know only the bass line to this piece. You might be wondering why I would know only the bass line to this particular piece of music, and that would be a question. The answer is this: I spent an entire year in high school working on it for District Band Competition.

Now, the thing about me and the high school band is this - I was in band because all of my friends were in band - not because I had any particular interest in music and certainly not in the bass clarinet. This fact was something that completely escaped my band directors. They were under the mistaken impression that I cared about being in the District Band. Boy, did I prove them wrong. It was required that all high school band students participate in this particular competition. So, in an effort to NOT embarrass myself in front of all of my friends, I worked on the piece - just enough to not make a fool of myself when it came time to perform.

When the day of the competition arrived I was in a particularly flippant mood. Because I did not really want to be at this competition, I wasn't being as careful with my instrument as I should have been. What I mean by that is, I dropped it. A person who has never played a musical instrument might be thinking - no big deal, just pick it up - and I did. It was only after careful inspection of my equipment that I realized a small part of the reed was broken. The reed of a bass clarinet plays an important part in making the instrument produce the appropriate sound when you blow into it. Rather than walk out of the room and disqualify myself (which would have been the smart thing to do) I decided it would be better if I tried to play the piece anyway. I have to tell you - it sounded bad. And when I say bad, I mean very bad, unrecognizably bad. Because I am not a quitter, I struggled through all three pieces with this broken equipment. I really don’t know what I was thinking – it was totally ridiculous that I continued to play. It was creating such a tension in the room that one boy actually went into a laughing fit and got disqualified after being escorted from the room.

The saddest part of this story is that when it was all said and done, I actually felt all right about my performance. Despite my poor showing, I really believed that I wouldn’t place dead last because there was another participant that decided to play "Mars: The Planets" instead of the required piece. I was wrong – he placed above me, in second to last place.