Music Notes

It's another glorious fall day – bright and sunny, not overly warm, breezy......just about perfection! We had a nice, quiet weekend. We deliberately stayed home Saturday – it was Carrollton's annual Band Day. For a small town, we hold what may be the largest Band Day in the state on the fourth Saturday of September every year. It's not unusual to have in the neighborhood of 70 schools participating. However, that makes for some crazy scenes around town as streets are blocked off, the area for blocks around the school is loaded with school buses, people unfamiliar with town are trying to navigate from the town square (site of the parade contest) to the school (everything else). It's safer to just stay home!

I decided to do some cabinet cleaning today. Hubby was eyeing that process warily......he's never sure how much trash there will be for him to deal with when I get in a cleaning mood! I sorted through and discarded a bit of Tupperware – I figured those pieces that are older than my kids probably need to go! I have a cabinet in the kitchen I want to clean out now, and maybe switch some stuff between it and the one I've already cleaned out. But hubby is downloading a new operating program on one of his computers – on the kitchen table – so I'm trying to keep my distance from that.

Getting off the bus at home on these warm fall days was always a little tough – I was so ready to be out of the classroom and outside! I wanted to play, to feel the breeze, ride my bike, maybe go with Dad to find the milk cow. But there was homework. And for the fall of my fifth grade year – there was piano practice.

Don't get me wrong, I've always loved playing the piano. But I always wanted to play it for me – what I wanted to play, when I wanted to play. It doesn't work that way when you're taking lessons. Mom would finally bribe me with TV – that was about the only thing that would get me to practice those scales, the promise of TV afterwards.

I never had many piano lessons. The summer between first and second grade, I took lessons from our close neighbor. Twice a week I would walk to her house with (I believe) 50 cents in my hand to pay for my lesson. I was young enough that the practice didn't bother me as much then. The next time I took lessons was the summer between fourth and fifth grades – our neighbors up the hill (kind of surrogate grandparents for me) paid for piano lessons as my birthday present. Somehow, that summer of lessons lasted into the fall. That fall recital was my first – and only – recital. And oh, how glad I was! Memorization is NOT my thing, and it made me nervous almost to the point of being sick!

My last attempt at lessons was my first semester of college. I think the poor keyboard teacher (who actually was my favorite teacher in college) was extremely happy when I told her I was only taking one semester!! By that time, I'd developed a lot of bad habits. And I didn't know those hated scales. I'm much happier playing for me, just however I “feel” the music.

Evidently, bad habits or not, I did okay with the piano. During high school I played for both boys' and girls' music class and glee club. I accompanied for school programs and music contests. I started playing for church when I was 13, and was doing funerals by the time I was 16. And by 17 I'd done my first wedding.

When I took typing in high school, we began on manual typewriters. The teacher said she could always tell who'd taken piano lessons, because they had stronger fingers when dealing with the manual typewriters. I'd never really thought of my fingers as “muscular” until then – but probably my kids would say they are.......I used to signal them to quiet down in church by thumping the ends of their noses. They always said it hurt!