My mom insisted that my sister and I play musical instruments, and being the poor family we were, hand-me-down instruments. My sister took to the clarinet easily and has some talent in both playing and understanding what makes music. When my turn came, five years later, my mother assumed I would play the clarinet, too. Well, anyone who knows me, knows that I have a stubborn streak that occasionally rears its ugly head and will not be dissuaded no matter how hard someone tries. I did not want to be like my sister, so there was NO WAY on God's green Earth I was going to play anything with a reed. I chose the flute.
I have no real talent in music. I like to listen to it and that's about as far as it goes. But my mother was as stubborn as me (hmmm, guess I'm sensing a trend) and there was no way I was going to get out of middle and high school without years of band under my belt. In the 5th grade, the West Bend School District starts to recruit students for the middle and high school bands. My teacher, Mr. Ratzer, was an old fashion German oompa polka-loving man who scared us with his gruff German accent, barely understandable English, and his top-of-the-lungs yelling in German when things weren't going right. The summer before I transferred to Badger Middle School in West Bend (1978), my mother signed me up for band, and took me to the meeting where we were paired up with an instrument just like Harry Potter was assigned a school. Only Mr. Ratzer was our sorting hat. He kind of looked like the sorting hat, come to think about it...
As my turn came up, Mr. Ratzer assessed me up and down, grabbed my hand, turned it over and pronounced, "clarinet!" I'm sure my mother told him what to say. I looked at him and said, "no. I don't want to play the clarinet." You could have heard the gasps, a pin, and the collective shock across the whole gym. NO ONE talks back to Mr. Ratzer. He had huge glasses that magnified his eyes, which he now set in to me like lasers. He pursed his lips and said, "Vat do you vant to play?" "The flute." He took my hands again, turned them over and said, "you vingers are to short, no good flute." I refused to budge. Flute or nothing. My mother tried her usual anger tactic, which made me sullen, but I refused. She sighed, said ok, and then said to the band people, "Will you take payments?" It never occurred to me that we didn't have the money to buy a flute, yet we had a crappy second hand clarinet that was free. We had two actually, and to this day I'm not sure where she got them. My sister has both now, as I still have my flute, but it must have been a hardship for my parents because I'm sure it wasn't cheap.
And the summer of flute lessons began. I really am not kidding when I say I have no talent in music at all. I never completely understood how to read music. I learned by repetitive playing. My band teachers were increasingly frustrated with my level of playing. I was just good enough to be in Symphonic band in high school, only because the motivation was strong to be with my friends. I did ok in groups, but solo work was horrifying. I took up the piccolo, which I loved for pep band, but if I had to play in Symphonic, I was terrible. I lettered several times over in band, did very well in the Solo & Ensemble contests, went to State in 1984 with the flute choir, and have many medals from duets and trios with my two flute friends, Amy and Karen. They both had talent, and Karen was our 1st chair for three years. We three played the piccolo and flute our sophomore through senior years.
While I feel I had no real talent, I still could play. I just wasn't that good. However, the social aspect of band taught me more about life than playing an instrument, and for that I thank my mother for her insistence in making me play an instrument. As an adult, I feel bad about acting the way I did because I know that they did not have the money for a flute, even if it was a used one. I know it was over $100 and back in 1978 that meant something. But, I have two friends that I'm still in contact with today, and I had some really fun times with the group. We even have our own color picture in the 1984 West Bend East/West High School yearbook. A color photo.
Yeah, it's a pic of a pic, but I'm sure the negative of this is long gone. No digital cameras back then. I'm the one in black behind Amy, and Karen is next to me. Gabby, in green, was more Amy's friend and was younger than us. We played in all the pep games for both football and basketball, did the parades, the outings, pretty much everything band. Yes, we were band geeks. But as I look back on the whole experience now, I'm glad my mother was insistent we play an instrument. Little did she know, however, that for me it would end up being a social element and not really about the music. I just didn't have the talent, but I understood that where my friends were, I would be. And while I will still hate the heat and humidity of summer, I will always look back on our summer outings and hang-outs as the best parts of my adolescent life.
