NOW BLOW!

In yesterday’s LA Times there was a funny op-ed piece written by Meghan Daum on Supreme Court nominees. The gist of the story was that one of those who may be a nominee, Diane P. Wood, a US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge among other things, should be especially considered because she is an oboe player. Daum’s column give the traits necessary to be a good oboe player and says they are the same traits necessary for good judges, and she tops the list with the fact that oboe players are the ones who sound the A that tunes the first violin that in turn tunes the whole orchestra. Oboes are not easy to tune, she says, and even if they don’t exactly hit the A right on, regardless the whole orchestra uses that note as an A. She says oboists are not always right but they are the deciders and everyone falls in line!

It was a very humorous and appealing column. I laughed and wished that our government could approach things in such a manner: stop the fighting and get on with the important stuff.

But also in this column Daum says that there is arguably one instrument that is harder to play than the oboe and that is the bassoon. Which brings me to the topic for my column today.

When I was in school we didn’t start our musical knowledge in elementary school learning to play recorders like kids nowadays do. We had to wait until seventh grade. At that time the schools furnished us with either a string or a woodwind instrument if we wanted to learn to play and we got lessons right in school. Some kids wanted to do this and some kids didn’t. All my friends did, so I got in line with them.

Now as I have told the story all these years, (which may or may not be exactly how it transpired) I happened to be the last kid in line and when I got to the music teacher there was only one instrument left – a bassoon. I had never seen nor even heard of a bassoon. It came in a large trunk-like case, which should have been my first clue that it wasn’t going to be a good fit.

In junior high school I was such a runty little kid that my parents drove me once a month to a clinic in Monrovia, about 60 freeway-less miles from Long Beach, where there was a doctor who specialized in nutrition for ailing and asthmatic children. I wasn’t skinny because I was sick; I was just skinny, period, and my folks worried about me. But no matter what Dr. Pottenger prescribed for me to eat, I stayed skinny. Well, I was so small I could barely carry the case that contained the bassoon. To make matters worse, when I got to the first class and the teacher showed me how to put the bassoon together, it was at least twice as tall as I was. Furthermore, as I recall (and if I am wrong here I will surely hear from my son about it) the teacher told me to bite down on the reed with my lip-covered teeth and then blow my lungs out through the now very squeezed-together reed. That first day I managed to get only a few anemic EEKS out and then spent the rest of the day not eating because I was afraid my sore lips were going to fall off.

I don’t remember how long it was that I labored to produce a sound. Many years later a friend said she remembered bringing her saxophone over and practicing with me and my bassoon. I don’t remember that, probably because I hate to remember traumatic events. But I have the feeling that I never got to the point of being able to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” or whatever tune #1 in Tune Book #1 was.

I have my yearbook from seventh grade, the year we got our instruments, and in the photos you will find all my friends sitting with their instruments either in the orchestra or the band. Dokey and Ro had saxes, Irene had a cornet, Fran a clarinet, Allan had a saxophone and Sammie (who later played football in high school and became a Captain in a big-city Sheriff’s department) had a violin. But you won’t see me in those photos. I have the eighth-grade yearbook too, and the same kids are sitting and the same kid is NOT sitting. But neither does a bassoon appear in either of the yearbooks, so I suspect it was not just me who objected to that huge instrument. (Well, the tuba was big too, but there was always some short tubby kid who had the lung power to make that one work.)

Basically what my not continuing with the bassoon did was to send me off in a different direction than my friends. They all played in bands and orchestras throughout their entire public school years. Dokey later joined the Army and played her sax in the Army Band. Ro still travels all over and plays the recorder at Shakespeare festivals and Renaissance Fairs.

Me? While they were all busy making music I was taking journalism classes and working on school newspapers. Even though our extracurricular school activities went in different directions, my friends and I stayed friends throughout school and in fact are still friends to this day, lack of bassooning notwithstanding.

Actually, from having taken violin, piano and guitar lessons in addition to the short stint with the bassoon (I never learned to play any of them) I did learn to read music and play the ukulele, and later I knew enough to sing in choirs, to direct Children’s choirs and to really love and appreciate music, especially cool jazz. So I’m lucky that in spite of giving up on the bassoon, I still ended up doing what I love most, being surrounded with music with the flick of a switch, and putting pen to paper (or words to monitor)!