From the Halls of Montezuma...

Until now, I hadn't tried to play an instrument since the fifth grade when I played the trumpet in band. I only ended up playing trumpet because my dad had one from when he was in high school and so we didn't have to rent or buy anything like some of the other kids. This meant that my trumpet was outfitted with a cream colored leather case that had brown leather accents with white top-stitching on either end. While a case like that would be cool now, to a self-conscious elementary school kid it wasn't great to stand out, especially when everyone else in the whole band had a plain black case for their instruments.

To make matters worse, I was the only girl trumpet player. The other two players were boys. Jeff was slimy and always brought his lunch in an orange Tupperware sandwich container that his mother packed for him. David was ok and I had a crush on him later in the school year and tormented him relentlessly with phones calls in collaboration with my friend Jenny...but I digress. The point is that he was still a boy and all my girlfriends were playing light girly instruments like the clarinet and the flute.

Anyway, I didn't like playing the trumpet and I hated practicing. Sometimes during band at school, I would just pretend that I was playing, but I wasn't actually pursing my lips, so no sound came out. I thought that was a good way to fool Mr. Allison, but it didn't fool my friend Andrea, who later called me on it in a patronizing fashion for a 5th grader. I was mortified.

When I did practice, the only songs that I felt really expert at playing were "Jingle Bells" and a song that starts off with the lyrics, "From the Halls of Montezuma..." (I just looked up the lyrics for that song, and I found out that it's a US Marine Corps hymn. WTF?!! http://www.instantknowledgenews.com/marine.htm)
I could also play the first few notes of Chuck Mangioni's "Feels so Good", but not the whole song.

Needless to say, I didn't stick with band very long. My addled trumpet career ended when I started 6th grade. I lived in Olympia by the capitol and to get to my middle school, we had to ride the city bus with....(insert music from the "Psycho" shower scene here) the HIGH SCHOOLERS! There was no way in hell I was going to try to tote that stupid trumpet case, my white Esprit book bag (remember, it was 1986), and my PE clothes (which I had to take to school on Mondays and home on Fridays - preferably in a plastic shopping bag from a mall store like the GAP) on the bus and navigate it all around actual high schoolers. No way, Jose.

So, to fill my music requirement for the 6th grade, I chose to take Chorus instead. It sucked harder than band, if you can believe it. But I was free of the trumpet case and chorus didn't require any practicing outside of school. It still scarred me horribly, because Mr. Strid was the antichrist, so I didn't try anything muscial again until about six months ago, when I bought my bass.

Tune in tomorrow to find out more about that...